Erik is Fired!
by MetaChi
Summary: Suppose being the Opera Ghost was a real job, not a selfmade title. And suppose the managers were displeased with Erik's work . . .
1. The Managers are going to regret this

It's here . . . the phic you've all been waiting for! XD

Disclaimer: I don't own PotO or anything referenced or the phangirls, for that matter. I don't even own the lighter used in chappie three! However, I lay full claim to the Siren. I got the idea from Erik's insisting she was real in Leroux's book, but the character is all mine.

**Weird musings:** I was reading an X-Men: Evolution fic about Magneto reviewing all his Acolytes, and I thought: What if I carried this basic concept over to PotO, but the managers fired everyone instead? And so, I began writing this _before_ I realized that it could look like I'd gotten the idea from Erik and Garnier's conversation in Kay's book. Because I didn't. Really.

Anyway! On with da phic!

**xxxxxxxx**

Erik leaned out from where he was standing at the end of a long ling of people, all of whom were waiting to see the managers, then looked down at the card he'd received in the mail not more than twenty-four hours earlier. He'd been so ecstatic to get this; it was his first piece of mail ever!

Pity it was also his pink slip.

He glanced at it again. Funny . . . they had told him to be here at eight o'clock and it was now nine-thirty.

Erik knew, because he had an excellent internal clock. How else was he supposed to keep track of time in his underground home, where he obviously couldn't use a sundial? There were watches, sure, but they tended to act weird after awhile. He could only manage a guess that that had something to do with being closer to the Earth's core, and something with magnetism. He wasn't sure.

Remy, Moncharmin and Richard's secretary (and secretly known as the mutant Gambit), stepped out of his little secretary's office and looked at the line of people, who all stared back at him hopefully.

"Erik the Opera Ghost?" he called. The last two words had a tremendous effect on the people there, for when they were spoken, everyone else in the line twittered in sudden fear as Erik stepped away from them and walked towards Remy.

"In there, monsieur," said Remy, pointing into the office, and Erik entered it.

Moncharmin, wearing a baseball cap, played with a yo-yo in a corner of the room, while Richard sat at the desk working on a pile of paperwork.

Erik silently sat down in one of the expensive chairs and waited patiently.

Richard soon finished up his forms and set them aside. Then he looked up at Erik's masked face calmly.

"You've been with this Opera since it was constructed, correct?" asked Richard.

Moncharmin popped a piece of gum into his mouth.

Erik nodded. "I also helped to build it."

Richard nodded as well. "Very good." He marked something down on a sheet of paper.

Erik leaned forward to try and read it, wondering what it was.

Richard put his arm around the paper, blocking any chance Erik might have had of seeing what it said. "We have received some . . . complaints, lately," he went on.

Moncharmin blew a bubble.

"Stop that!" commanded Richard. Moncharmin glared, popped it, and threw the gum away. He resumed playing with his yo-yo.

Richard consulted a different sheet of paper and continued, "from a Vicomte by the name of de Chagny."

Erik stood up indignantly and was about to give his rather rude reply when Richard motioned for him to sit down.

He did so very reluctantly.

"He claims that you have 'kidnapped' Christine Daae on numerous occasions."

Erik fought to keep his voice level. "No . . . she came with me willingly each time. Well . . . except for that last incident . . . "

Richard looked at Erik imploringly. "We understand you wanting to have company now and then, but we mustn't have our patrons getting upset about it. It does things to the money supply."

He set that paper aside and picked up a different one.

"Now, by the complaints listed here by our other employees, or, shall I say, 'lack of complaints', you have been slacking off in your duties. You have only caused a small bit of tension among the ballet girls, we have had almost no eerie music during performances, you've only wrecked one chandelier this year, and worst of all, people are beginning to demand Box Five again!" Richard again looked up at Erik. "Is this on account of that Daae girl?"

Erik was forced to nod. "Yes," he whispered.

Richard sighed. "Erik, we pay you an enormous wage for the work you do here, plus we pay your bills, and generously keep most everyone out of the basements for you. You cannot let yourself get sidetracked so easily. When was the last time you've used your ventriloquism?"

"Carlotta's croaking," he answered.

"And also, there have been no reports of strange men in the hallways, no eerie footsteps, and no one has faked their death since Joseph Buquet!"

Buquet had in fact conspired with Erik to feign his own death so as to begin anew in Australia as an accountant. I know; it makes no sense.

"I've been . . . busy lately," lied Erik.

Richard marked something else down on his paper, then looked back up. He ignored Erik's answer. "The thing is, Erik, we're losing money. People are beginning to think there's no Ghost here after all. We're losing publicity because you haven't been up to par lately. Erik . . ."

Erik knew what Richard was about to say.

"You're fired. We're very sorry," Richard finished apologetically.

Moncharmin pulled out a dart gun and shot at the wall. The dart went right through the plaster of various walls until it came to a bathroom, where it landed in a toilet.

"No, we're not," Moncharmin said truthfully. "We're going to get a new Phantom. You've got twenty-four hours to move out of your house."

Erik leapt out of his chair angrily. "I've given the best years of my life to the Opera and _this_ is how you repay me!" He chucked the chair at Richard, who ducked, and it went soaring out the window, landing on Raoul's empty carriage.

He and Christine stared at it in surprise, then looked up the building at the broken window.

"I should just kill you both now!" screamed Erik. Richard, who had been expecting something like this, pressed a button on his intercom (hey, it's theoretically possible that they had these in the 1880's) and Police Commissary Mifroid and three of his officers strolled in.

"Good-bye, Erik," said Richard, waving his hand dismissively. Mifroid, who had his hand trained on his gun, nodded encouragingly.

Erik stormed out of the office and past the long line of people. When he got to the end of the hallway, he seemingly disappeared.

The entire way back down towards his house, he was raging. How could they just FIRE him? He, the Opera Ghost, whose will went unchallenged!

_Because it had always been challenged,_ the rational side of Erik argued_, the managers paid him for all his stunts, after all, and granted him his privacy. They just pretended to not be in control so the Opera Board of Directors wouldn't realize the entire thing was just a publicity stunt._

_But it was still unfair!_ the angry side of Erik argued, and the rational side of Erik agreed. He had been keeping up with his duties, they were just half-heartedly done.

But still, Erik knew that they thought they were doing the right thing.

That didn't mean he couldn't continue to be angry, however.

He strode into his house, where Ayesha was waiting. He picked her up and petted her as he looked around at his things. He was sure he was going to need help getting all this out of here. Fortunately, that help came a moment later, when the bell went off.

Nadir had arrived.


	2. The gang gets together

"I'll get it!" came a happy cry from outside, whereupon Erik put Ayesha down and dashed to the door, which he flung open in a hurry.

"Siren! NO! It's Nadir!" yelled Erik as loudly as he could, which, suffice it to say, could be heard up to the third story of the Opera. We'll not even go into how he knew that. The Siren immediately stopped swimming and looked back.

"Oh," she said in disappointment, then looked up at the boat as it passed her. "Hi Nadir!"

"Hello, Siren," Nadir greeted as Darius stopped his rowing to allow the blue mermaid-like creature to climb into the boat behind them. "How are you?"

"Just peachy," said the Siren as she looked down at the lake's surface. "Hey, I never really get to see it from up here. It looks so . . . dark."

"It isn't dark down there?"

"Nope! It's a pretty kind of dark green!"

Nadir nodded in amusement at the Siren's contrariness as Darius continued his rowing, soon reaching the house. The three of them hopped out and followed Erik inside.

"I heard what happened," said Nadir sympathetically. "I was sacked as well."

Erik looked at him in amazement. "They fired _you_! I didn't know you actually worked here!"

"Yesterday," answered Nadir. "They claimed I wasn't looking 'mysterious enough' and I was told I no longer had my trademark 'evil eye'. They told me to never come back, so I sneaked through the Rue Scribe entrance just now and heard . . . Raoul and Christine talking about your . . . um, release." He paused. "There was a chair lying on top of their carriage. It was most strange."

"Christine wasn't hurt, was she!"

"No, no, of course not." Nadir looked at Erik carefully. "Don't tell me _you_ were responsible for that chair being there."

Erik looked away. Nadir sighed.

"Why would you throw a chair on the Vicomte's carriage?"

"I didn't know de Chagny was there! Those imbeciles told me I was fired . . . and I . . . threw the chair at Richard. It flew through the window and must have landed there."

Nadir sighed again. "I suppose I can't really blame you. I felt like doing the same thing."

The Siren looked around Erik's house very carefully. This had been the first time ever that she'd been allowed inside, and since it now seemed it would be the last, she wasn't going to miss a thing.

Ayesha followed her around suspiciously, hating the fact that the half-mermaid creature was bringing the dirty lake-water into her domain.

"They told me I have twenty-four hours to get my things out of here," Erik told Nadir, who motioned to Darius.

"Both Darius and I would be more than happy to help you get your possessions together."

"I'll help, too!" piped up the Siren. "I can use my Supernatural Siren Strength™!" 1

"I'd prefer you didn't," both Erik and Nadir said at once, with Ayesha silently agreeing with them.

"Where are you going to stay?" asked Nadir.

"I was thinking that you could get me an apartment nearby for now until I figure something out."

Nadir nodded. "Of course." He looked around at all of Erik's furniture and had just begun to ask, "How are we going to do this?" when the bell went off. Again.

"I'll get it!" the Siren immediately said, happy at the noise, and made for the front door. Erik beat her to it and looked out carefully.

The Siren, Nadir, and Darius looked out as well, one head above another, in that classic cartoon way. In the boat coming towards them were Madame Giry and Meg.

"How many boats have you got?" asked Nadir.

"Ten," answered Erik. "Five on each side, in case of emergencies."

The boat soon landed, and the Girys hopped out and walked up to the door.

Madame Giry tapped her cane in frustration. Nadir, Erik, Darius, and the Siren moved aside and opened the door further to allow them to enter.

Madame Giry was practically steaming from her anger. "I can't believe they just kicked you out like that!"

"Madame-" Erik began, but Meg stopped him.

"Let her vent, or else she'll pull the stuffing out of our couch later," Meg advised. "We've lost seven couches that way. She's threatening to move onto chairs next."

Erik nodded, stunned.

"Why, I'll bet that you're the best Ghost this Opera will ever have!" Madame Giry continued, swinging her cane erratically as she stomped around. Nadir, Darius, and the Siren ducked each time it seemed to come at them.

"I'll tell you this much!" she screamed. "They won't be gettin' Madame Giry to be the new Ghost's henchwoman, I assure you now! No, siree, they can just find someone else to do it!"

"They're threatening to fire Mom next," said Meg.

"Yeah, and if they do, I'll kick Richard in the fanny this time!" said Madame Giry, the memory of being literally kicked out of the managerial office still fresh in her mind.

"We've come to help you move," said Meg. "We figure it's the last thing we can do for you."

"Have you any idea who the new Phantom will be?" asked Erik. Meg shook her head.

"No, but I'll kill him!" screamed Madame Giry, still swinging her cane and making Nadir, Darius, and the Siren duck.

"You won't kill anyone, Madame," said Nadir. Madame Giry glared at him.

Then she sighed. "You're right," she admitted. "That's the Phantom's job."

"Not anymore." Erik sighed as well.

Then, with another heavy sigh, they looked around the house.

"Well, guess we should get to work," said Meg.

Nine long hours later, all of Erik's possessions had been moved from his house to an apartment a couple streets away. The six exhausted people were now in Erik's new home, looking at everything.

Madame Giry was lying on the couch and fanning herself, Meg was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and Erik, Darius, and Nadir were sitting on chairs. They were all breathing heavily.

The Siren was the only one standing. She didn't even seem the least bit tired, even though she'd done a lot of the work. This was, of course, not due to the fact that she may or may not be a Mary Sue, but of her Supernatural Siren Strength™, which she didn't tell anyone she had used.

"I have so many neato decorating ideas for this place!" she said, holding Ayesha and wandering through the apartment, examining every little thing.

Ayesha didn't much like being held by someone who ran to the bathroom every twenty minutes to fill up the sink and dunk her head in it.

But every time she tried to get away, the Siren would scratch behind her ears, causing her to purr happily.

Why did cats have that infernal weakness!

"It's going to look so nice when we're done with it!" the Siren continued happily, scratching behind the cat's ears. Ayesha began to purr involuntarily.

"We?" asked Erik.

"I'm coming with you!" said the Siren. "I couldn't serve any other Opera Ghost!"

Erik was touched. "Why . . . thank you."

"You're welcome!" beamed the Siren. "Can we make a cake?"

Ignoring the Siren's random outburst, everyone else stared at his stuff silently for a short while, before the silence was interrupted.

"We need to go back. I need destroy all the barrels of gunpowder," said Erik suddenly.

Nadir stared at Erik. "WHAT!"

"Relax," said Erik. "I wasn't planning to do anything with them."

"Yes, you were!" Nadir accused. "If you weren't, you wouldn't have them!"

Erik explained the gunpowder incident.

"Oh," said Nadir apologetically. "Well, that's understandable . . . I suppose."

And so, leaving Ayesha behind (who was jealous that the Siren got to go), they all headed back to take care of the last minute details in Erik's house.

Once at the Opera, they passed the long line of possible sackees, which included Gabriel, Mercier, Mauclair, Lachenal, the supervisor, and that famous baritone, Carolus Fonta, and silently wished them all luck when their turn came to deal with the managers.

And back in the basements, after a near collision course with Raoul and Christine (Nadir, Madame Giry, the Siren, and Meg had quickly gone into action to block any chance that Erik might have had of seeing them), they returned to the sub-levels of the Opera.

"It looks so strange to see it empty again, after all this time," Erik commented, feeling homesick for the place.

A group of phangirls appeared from all over the house, sniffing sadly and leaning on each other. They all glomped Erik at the same time and then, still supporting each other, walked through the front door, bawling their eyes out.

One of them popped her head back in and shouted, "Erik is the only Phantom that we'll EVER worship!"

Erik, forced to the floor by their sudden, rapid, quick, etc., etc., insane hugging, took in this information.

"Thanks . . . ladies," he gasped as he tried to stand back up. "I . . . appreciate it."

Another phan popped her head in and managed to grin through her tears. "Thanks, Erik-sama. We're off to protest this to the management." She paused. "If that doesn't work, we'll go Pyro on them!" She laughed maniacally.

"No, we won't," said the first phan. "The Admiral won't let us actually burn anything."

"Aww," whined the second. "I really wanted to use this!" She held up a Phantom-mask-shaped lighter dramatically.

"Hey, I want one of those!" said the first phan. The second one laughed again, and they both pulled their heads out of the house and took off.

"What does 'sama' mean?" asked Erik a moment later, sitting against the wall by the front door.

"Oh, I know!" said the Siren. "It means much respect, y'know, like that which befits a lord or king." She beamed.

Erik then said something very, very, very, _very _ OOC. "Nifty."

Madame Giry and Meg just stood there, mouths hanging open in shock at what just happened.

"Those were just a few of Erik's phans," explained Nadir matter-of-factly, then paused. "I think the management is going to have some _very_ large problems soon."

Just as he said that, they could all hear some shouts coming from upstairs, and it sounded like someone had shouted, "Flood!"

Then it seemed that they could hear a phan rebuking another for acting so quickly on her impulses.

"The Admiral's not going to like this!" came the faint shout from upstairs.

"I think," said Erik, standing up, "that it would be wise for us to get out of here as quickly as possible."

Erik would normally have defended his Opera to the death, but even he knew better than to mess with a vengeful fangirl, even if she was one of his own phans.

After all, to the worshipees, we're scary.

"Good idea," agreed Madame Giry. They all hurried into the torture chamber and lifted up the trapdoor.

Dragging the barrels out, they chucked them into the lake. Afterwards, Erik disarmed that cool scorpion/grasshopper bomb thingy, because if anyone was going to blow up the Opera, it'd be him. Or Christine.

Once back at Ayesha, the Siren, and Erik's new place, Erik sank down on the couch, sighing in sorrow.

"I already miss my house," he muttered sadly. "I miss Christine!"

Madame Giry and Nadir exchanged meaningful glances, then walked over to Erik and took hold of his arms.

"Let's take a break from all this right now," Nadir suggested.

"Right!" said Madame Giry. "What you need right now is some FUN!"

Meg, Darius, and the Siren nodded.

"I've always wanted to vault roofs," the Siren suggested.

Everyone gave her a good, long stare of disbelief.

"What?"

"I think you're clinically insane," said Meg.

"Well, you would be, too, if you spent your whole life swimming around in a bright pretty lake, and your only purpose in life was to defend an underground house," the Siren pointed out. "Besides, I like being insane! It's fun."

"I paid you and gave you Fridays off," Erik pointed out. The Siren nodded and pulled a small bag from her shorts' pocket. It was dripping with water.

"I've been saving up!" she beamed.

"For what?" everyone asked curiously."A big set of paints and lots of fancy paper!" she said happily.

"Why?" asked Meg.

"I'm an artist!" the Siren declared dramatically. "You should see my doodles at the bottom of the lake!"

"Congratulations, Siren," everyone said, forcing themselves to sound cheery when in reality they thought that was rather silly sounding – wouldn't the water make it impossible to draw in the sand?

Madame Giry and Nadir continued pulling Erik towards the door.

"I'm fine, really!"

The two sighed. "No, you're not, Erik. You need help."

"I beg your pardon!"

"You _know_ what we mean!"

"Fine," Erik sighed, deciding it was better to just give in than fight these two.

He would lose, anyway.

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

1 As seen in The Phantom of the SOAP Opera.


	3. PAINTBALL!

Everything I know about this lovely sport came from a certain episode of According to Jim.

---

Erik looked around the paintball pit in disbelief. "_This_ is where you brought me! _This_ is supposed to be _fun_!"

Nadir nodded firmly. "Yes, Erik. You get to kill all the people you want, but the beauty of it is that they don't really die!"

"Besides, it's a great way to learn tactics," added Madame Giry as Meg returned with the sign up sheets.

"Christine's going to be mad she missed this," said Meg regretfully. Madame Giry smacked her on the back of her head.

"Ow!" said Meg, rubbing her skull. "Oh, right. No mention of Chris- Ow!"

"Christine _likes_ this vile sport!"

Meg nodded. "Yep." She passed out the sheets. "Okay, we need to decide who is going to be on each team."

"I call Erik and Nadir!" the Siren immediately claimed.

Madame Giry glared at her. She had wanted Erik on her team. "Fine," she reluctantly submitted. "Meg, Persian servant, you're with me."

"My name is Darius, Madame," said Darius respectfully.

"Whatever. Fill out this form."

Soon, everyone was suited up and ready for war!

"Spread out!" commanded Madame Giry. She, her daughter, and Darius disappeared into the woods.

"Come on, Erik!" said Nadir. "We're vulnerable here!"

As Nadir was pulling Erik out of the clearing and towards the wooded area, the Siren suddenly went down on one knee and released a barrage of paintshots into the woods around them.

Moans, groans, and shouts of anger and frustration floated out from the trees.

The Siren smiled, stood up, and pretended to blow the smoke from her gun. Meg appeared beside a tree.

"I'm not dead yet!" she gloated, running away. After a short distance, she stopped and turned back. "You can't paint worth a piece of kelp!" she insulted, then took off, laughing her best maniacal laugh, which frankly needed to be improved.

The Siren whipped out some black paint from her suit, underlined her eyes, gave a war cry, and took off.

"You're not supposed to leave your team members undefended!" called Nadir.

"Forget the rules!" came the Siren's faint reply. "This is _personal!_ "

"Well, looks like we're on our own," said Nadir. He looked back at Erik. "Oh, don't look so disgusted. This is supposed to be fun!"

"People shoot paint at each other and pretend to die."

"This is war, man!" Nadir grabbed Erik's arm and pulled him down. He pointed. "Someone's over there!"

Erik looked to see Darius pacing the area with his gun ready.

"When I say three," Nadir whispered, "we jump up and catch him off guard."

"Is this really necces-" Erik began.

"THREE!" Nadir shouted, then hopped to his feet. He quickly aimed his gun and caught Darius right above the heart. With the kind of open-mouthed blinking stare one gets when they can't believe something happened to them that couldn't possibly have happened, Darius gave a heaving sigh, then fell down. Carefully, of course.

Erik and Nadir stood over his 'dead' body. Nadir laughed.

"Ha! My first victory today!" he gloated. He tapped Darius in the side with his shoe. "Good show, Darius. Go have some pizza. It's a new import from Italy, and it's supposed to be exquisite!"

Darius opened his eyes and sat up. "If you say so, sir."

"Go, then," said Nadir. Darius stood and began to walk away.

"Look out, master!" he suddenly cried. Nadir jumped half a foot to his right, and a paintball whizzed by his arm. Nadir clapped Darius on the shoulder.

"Thanks," he said. "You just saved my life!" He paused. "If you can, spare some pizza for the rest of us."

Darius saluted. "Will do, sir." He walked off towards the entrance.

"That was the strangest thing I've ever seen," said Erik. "And I've seen a _lot._"

"Of course it is!" Nadir said. "Are you going to play or not?"

"I don't know," said Erik. "I do have my pride to think about."

They both had to duck down as Madame Giry swung down from a tree, yelling like Tarzan. Nadir and Erik dived behind a tree to avoid her paintshots.

Then she was gone.

"Come on!" shouted Nadir. "She's going to be back!"

"She's a madwoman!" Erik gasped.

"Paintball does that to people," said Nadir, dashing off. "Follow me!"

They soon found a nice little cave in the side of a hill that looked just like a hobbit hole.

After carefully investigating it for any enemies (or hobbits), they dived inside just as Madame Giry made her reappearance.

"You can get her, Erik!" said Nadir. "You've got great aim!"

Erik peeked out one of the windows. "I don't know . . ."

"Do it, man!" shouted Nadir. Apparently, paintball brings out a warlike quality in the Daroga.

Erik opened the door carefully and leaned out. A paintball landed on the ground to his right. He dove back inside.

"She's out there waiting for us."

Nadir moved to the back of the cave. "There's a back door! You go back there now, and when I see light coming from there, I'll go out the front to distract her."

"All right." Erik joined him down there. He peeked out the window before slowly opening the door. Nadir moved back to the front of the cave.

Erik stepped out, his gun ready. He didn't see Madame Giry anywhere nearby. . .

A flash of paintball flying in from the trees in front of the cave told Erik exactly what he needed to know. He aimed his gun and pulled the trigger, watching his paintball disappear into the trees. Then he went around the hill to stand next to Nadir, who was now outside, and they both waited. Soon Madame Giry appeared from a canopy above, sliding down a rope.

She showed them the paintball mark on her suit, right above her collarbone.

"How did you do that?" she asked. "There was no way you could have seen me up there!"

Erik shrugged self-consciously.

"I'll bet that was the best shot in the entire history of this place!" Nadir exclaimed. "We should tell the tally-takers what you did!"

Madame Giry nodded enthusiastically. "You really should, you know," she agreed. "I bet they'd give you a certificate or an award or something."

"No, it's really not necessary," Erik tried to protest as they ignored him once more and pulled him off towards the entrance.

Meanwhile, Meg was doing an excellent job of avoiding the Siren. The Siren had gotten really lucky at some points, almost hitting Meg, but Meg wasn't a ballet girl for nothing.

And Meg had also had her moments, also nearly hitting the Siren sometimes, but the Siren, whose entire life had been spent underwater, was very agile, and could dodge a shot even at close range. Not to mention that the Siren had near Elvish hearing, due to her lineage.

The Siren climbed up a tree and waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

What she didn't realize at first was that Meg was in the tree behind her, aiming her gun very carefully. She pulled the trigger just as the Siren realized it was a trap.

A moment later, they both climbed down from the trees.

"I wonder if there's ever been a draw before?" the Siren wondered.

"Probably," answered Meg, "but far as I'm concerned, we both have another mark on our tally sheets."

The Siren nodded. "Cool."

They began to walk off to the find the others, then paused when they noticed something. They looked about and then grinned at each other.

There was no one else around!

"I won't tell anyone if you won't," said Meg, sticking her hand out.

"Deal!" agreed the Siren, shaking it. They picked up some leaves and began wiping the fresh paint off their suits.

Then they both cocked their guns and walked off in separate directions.

**xxxxxxxx**

"I'm telling you, it was the best shot I'd ever seen!" said Madame Giry.

"Yeah!" Nadir agreed. "There was no way at all that he could have possibly seen exactly where she was in that canopy!"

"I made sure that I was fully camouflaged!" Madame Giry said.

The tally taker sighed. "Madame, we do not give out awards for 'Best Shots'. We don't give out any sort of rewards. This is merely for fun."

"But surely something that remarkable deserves some kind of recognition!"

"Yes, if he were in the army."

"Gah!" said Madame Giry, throwing her arms up in the air. "Fine! Fine! Be that way!" She stalked off towards the waiting room that the place provided for the 'dead' to wait while their friends continued playing. "Ooh! Pizza! I've been wanting to try this!"

Nadir and Erik wandered back out to the playing field.

"This is rather fun," Erik admitted.

"Told you it was," gloated Nadir. "They could have at least given you a free ticket for that shot. That's how it works in arcades."

"What's an arcade?"

Nadir suddenly looked puzzled. "I'm not quite sure . . ."

They both dropped down, having heard some noise nearby, making the two of them forget the strange incident within the space-time continuum. They cautiously peeked out from the pit to see the Siren seemingly wandering aimlessly.

"Siren!" Erik hissed. "Siren!"

The Siren looked around. Nadir waved. She readied her gun.

"No, no! It's us!" said Erik. The Siren lowered her gun.

"Myles?"

Erik and Nadir exchanged amused glances, then looked back up. "Who?"

"Oh!" said the Siren. "Erik! Nadir! Hi!" She leapt down into the pit with them.

"Who's Myles?"

"Just someone I knew when I was younger," said the Siren dismissively. "Have you guys killed anyone?"

"Erik killed Madame Giry!" said Nadir. "With the best shot that either of us had ever seen!"

"And this is your first time here?" the Siren asked Erik, who nodded. "Cool. Did they give you an award?"

"No," said Nadir, whose previous frustration threatened to come back. "Haven't they given out awards in the past?"

The Siren assented as Erik interrupted, saying, "Wait, are you both telling me you've all come here before?"

"Loads of times," said the Siren without thinking.

"Without me?" asked Erik, suddenly feeling rather left out.

"Well, remember your reaction earlier?" said Nadir. "We just figured it wouldn't be your thing."

Meg trotted up. "I'm dead," she said. "Is it time to go yet?"

"I'm not dead!" boasted the Siren.

"I'm not dead either," said Nadir.

"Nor I," said Erik.

Meg shot the three of them. "Now you are. Let's go."

They looked down at the fresh paint on their suits.

"Well, poo," said the Siren.

And so the four headed off towards the main entrance, where Darius and Madame Giry were eating pizza.

They all tried a slice of pizza and were immediately captured by its wonderful cheesy-bready-tomatoey taste.

Then they all had to leave, because hordes of new 'dead' people swarmed in. Nadir and Darius went home, Erik and the Siren went back to their new home, and Madame Giry and Meg went back to the Opera. What a boring end to a chapter.


	4. Chaos in the Opera

Madame Giry and Meg stared around the Opera's auditorium, mouths hanging open in utter stupefaction at all the chaos.

"Richard and Moncharmin shall die if Erik isn't restored to his former position of GLORY!" cried a phan from atop a chandelier, holding a knife threateningly to the cord.

This was much the same scene throughout the building, for there were phans everywhere.

Those phans unfortunate enough to capture a chandelier opted for other methods of persuasion.

About twenty-five managed to pile into Box Five and began chanting.

"We won't accept any new Ghost, oh no, not this host!" they chanted together.

Okay, so it was a rather cheesy chant, but it was a spur of the moment kind of thing. And it was kind of cute . . . after a _very_ long exposure to it.

In Richard and Moncharmin's office, however, neither manager knew of the chaos that was going on practically right outside their office.

They were too busy firing stagehands and ushers.

Some phans kept themselves occupied by flooding all the toilets, claiming that it was a psychological means of persuasion.

"Hey, look, a dart!" said a phan, picking up Moncharmin's dart from a toilet. "Who do you think it belongs to?"

"You reached into toilet water for _that_?" another phan replied disgustedly.

A couple of phans, keeping watch at the entrance armed with chainsaws and Punjab lassos, greeted Madame Giry and Meg.

"Hey, maybe you can take us along next time you and Erik go play paintball?" they asked hopefully.

"Perhaps," said Madame Giry, staring at the phans in disbelief. "You all _like_ paintball?"

They nodded eagerly.

"Are you really Erik's phans?" asked Meg curiously.

"Too right!" exclaimed the phans, striking a silly pose. Meg giggled. Then the phans started up the chant. "We won't accept any new Ghost, oh no, not this host!"

Meg merely stared, but Madame Giry grinned.

"I like you girls."

"Too right!"

The phan with the Phantom lighter jogged up. "They're coming!" she shrieked, flicking the flame on and off in her excitement.

The other two phans growled. "The _applicants_!"

"East entrance!" said the pyromaniac.

"Go tell the Admiral," said one of the phans. The phan with the lighter nodded and left, going off towards the stage.

The other two took off to the east entrance.

Madame Giry moved to follow them, but Meg held her back.

"Don't go, Mom!"

"Nonsense, child. I want to see this." Madame Giry walked off.

"Well, she does have that cane," Meg mused to herself, deciding that Madame Giry would be able to take care of herself. She jogged off after her mother.

She found a string of about a hundred phans all holding hands, cutting off any passages accessible from that specific entrance. They were all swaying and giving their chant.

"We won't accept any new Ghost, oh no, not this host!"

The guards ordered to escort the applicants to the managers' office stared at the phans with a slight feeling of anxiety.

They, too, knew the danger of messing with vengeful fangirls.

_-_

Meanwhile, behind the stage, three rogue phans prowled the hall, heading down towards the end of it.

They flung open the door to find Raoul and Christine holding hands and looking all lovey-dovey.

The phans growled, causing the two to look up in surprise.

"Hello," said Christine cheerfully.

"This is all your fault, you know that?" shouted the phans, crossing the room and examining that famous mirror. They videotaped it, and took a few thousand digital/Polaroid/35 MM camera pictures. One of them even kissed it.

"What?" asked a very confused Christine

Then the phans kneeled down and bowed to The Almighty Mirror That Erik Often Used To Worship Christine.

Raoul stood up. "I don't think you have-"

"No, you look here," they interrupted, one of them standing on another's shoulders to reach up to the top of the mirror to find the switch, "because Christine took so long to make up her mind between the two of you, Erik's been fired! They're going to hire _SOMEONE ELSE!"_

Raoul and Christine nodded, a bit too happily if you ask me.

"Yes, we know," said Christine. "How do _you_ know that?"

"That's not important right now!"

"Yes it is," said Christine.

"That's why we're here!" cried the phans suddenly, as if they were reading from a completely different script. They then struck a pose and gave their chant. "We won't accept any new Ghost, oh no, not this host!"

Christine giggled, then stared at the trio thoughtfully. "You know Erik's name?"

"We know EVERYTHING about our wonderful Erik!" they shouted together, striking another pose, this one sillier than the last one. Christine and Raoul had to smile at the absurdness of it.

"Wait . . . 'your wonderful Erik'?" Christine asked.

"Too right!"

"Then . . . you know about his. . ."

"DAMN STRAIGHT!"

"And he . . . doesn't . . . frighten you?"

"Why would he frighten us!" the phans asked in apparent genuine confusion. They reached into their pockets and pulled out numerous photos of unmasked!Leroux!Erik and waved them around. Then they kissed them.

"You two are coming with us, by order of the Admiral," the leader-phan suddenly declared, holding her Punjab lasso in a threatening position. Her two flunkie-phans held their chainsaws just as threateningly.

Raoul, having had no control of the situation from the beginning, now tried to get it. "Who is this 'Admiral'?"

"Philippe!" screeched the third phan happily.

"Philippe is dead," answered Raoul solemnly.

"No, I'm not," said Philippe, suddenly leaning against the door in a most casual way.

The phans squealed and glomped him.

Raoul's eyes literally bugged out. "But . . . but . . . ERIK KILLED YOU!"

"No, he didn't," said Philippe. "And it wasn't Erik. The Siren was about to kill me, but then she changed her mind." He paused, having a flashback.

_Philippe's Flashback!_

_Philippe stood on the shore of the lake, looking across the water at the strange structure that vaguely resembled a house._

"_Does someone really live there?" he wondered to himself, looking around for a way to cross the lake. His eyes fell on the boat, so he immediately pushed it onto the water and climbed in. He picked up a paddle and began to row. He was almost halfway across the large lake when he thought he heard something._

"_Hi!"_

_Philippe looked around, confused, wondering if what he had just heard was his imagination._

"_Down here!"_

_He looked down at the lake's murky surface. There, a blue head framed by green hair looked up at him._

_The creature giggled._

"_You're cute!"_

"_Er . . . thanks . . ." said Philippe nervously, fully realizing he was talking to an apparition. Or so he thought._

"_You're welcome!" The creature beamed. "So, I'm supposed to kill you now."_

"_Why is that?" asked Philippe, beginning to worry. Why would his mind conjure up something horrible like this?_

"_Because Erik doesn't like anyone trespassing," said the blue girl - at least, Philippe thought it was a girl. He hoped it was a girl, on account of her earlier comment._

"_Who's Erik?" Philippe was beginning to suspect that his mind wasn't to blame after all. But then that meant this was real! It couldn't be - mermaids don't really exist!_

_Silly Philippe._

"_The Phantom of the Opera!" said the creature proudly. "And you can call me Siren."_

"_There really is a Phantom?" asked Philippe, slightly startled. But he was more happy than startled. It meant his brother wasn't crazy after all!_

_Or was he merely hoping that Raoul wasn't crazy? This could all still be a delusion._

_He was getting more confused by the second!_

"_Siren!" came a bunch of voices from the shore. The Siren and Philippe both turned that way._

_Philippe was sure that he wasn't imagining a bunch of teenage girls standing on the shore of the lake._

"_Hiya!" called the Siren happily, waving to them._

"_You can't kill Philippe!" they called. "We need him!"_

"_But he knows too much!"_

_Philippe couldn't believe it – was his fate really being debated like some cheesy conspiracy theory? Was his fate really in the hands of a group of adolescent girls and what looked like a mermaid?_

"_We'll buy you Subway if you let him live!"_

_What on Earth was a Subway?_

"_Okay!" called the Siren gleefully, seemingly not even giving it a thought. "But it'd better be a foot-long Sub! With no meat! And no lettuce! . . .and a double helping of Swiss cheese!"_

"_Of course!" the girls called back. The Siren swam over to the boat and climbed in. Philippe was surprised to see that she wasn't really a mermaid – she had legs. The Siren grabbed the paddle from him._

"_I wouldn't have killed you anyway," she whispered quietly. "You're much too cute to die!" And she smiled in a fangirly way._

_Philippe didn't even bother replying. Or resisting. He was much too confused by everything that was going on._

_End Philippe's flashback!_

"As a matter of fact, she actually acted quite similar to these girls here." He motioned to the phans, who grinned proudly, then posed and gave the chant.

"We won't accept any new Ghost, oh no, not this host!"

"Enough, girls," advised Philippe.

They shut up and looked to him for further instruction.

"Take Raoul and his wife-"

The E/C phans growled.

"-as your prisoners."

The phans saluted. "Will do, Admiral de Chagny!"

"Wait, wait, wait," said Raoul suddenly. "Hold up!"

They all turned to him.

"If you haven't been dead this entire time, where _have_ you been!" he demanded.

"Weeell," began Philippe, "these phans needed a rational, level-headed leader who wouldn't go nuts all the time, so it couldn't be a phan, and, although their first choice was undoubtedly Erik, they couldn't really ask him to be their leader, because then they'd constantly be . . . what was the word, again?"

"Glomping!"

"Glomping him, so they came and asked me to be their leader," he finished, then paused. "Of course, they glomp me as well, but not nearly as much as they would Erik."

"Too right!" shouted two of the phans.

"Wait . . ." said the third, "I glomp you as much as I would Erik!"

"Yes, you do, Number 13." Philippe couldn't help but grin, then continued, "And also, part of the reason was that Erik might have killed off a good number of them while they were trying to glomp him. They certainly didn't want to die while worshipping him."

The phans sighed sadly, acknowledging the truth in that. They envied the phans who had glomped Erik earlier and had managed to get out of it alive.

"I've been staying with them at their headquarters," continued Philippe. He paused. "That place is actually quite disturbing to non-phans."

The phans grinned and gave each other high-fives. "Awright!"

"Admiral de Chagny!" The phan with the lighter appeared in the door. "The applicants have arrived!"

Philippe nodded, and the phan crossed into the room and began giggling with the others.

"How many . . . um . . . phans . . . are there?" asked Christine faintly.

"At least five hundred here alone," the newest phan piped up. "There're thousands more where we come from."

Raoul and Christine's eyes literally bugged out. Again.

"And _all_ of you . . . worship . . ."

"DAMN STRAIGHT!" the phans screamed again. A few more phans, walking up the hall, peeked in and gasped. They rushed in and went on a hugging spree with Raoul.

After they got their own pictures of that famous room, they left after giving a short report to Philippe.


	5. Phan caused havoc & a video projector

Erik stared disbelievingly at the next morning's paper.

The headline read: WILD AND INSANE GIRLS TERRORIZE LOCAL OPERA HOUSE. Story on page six.

Ayesha and the Siren peeked over his shoulder to read it as well. Yeah, I didn't know the Siren could read either.

"Wow," began the Siren, "your phans sure do act fast."

"Yes," said Erik faintly, "it would seem that they do."

He opened the paper and flipped to the sixth page. They stared at the picture accompanying the story in amazement.

It showed a phan atop a chandelier, the chandelier stuck forever in mid-drop. The girl's eyes were glittering and her mouth curved upward in a big happy, albeit slightly scary, smile.

Erik had the unsettling feeling that she was mimicking his maniacal laughter.

They were silent as they began reading the story.

_Yesterday, around approximately five o'clock PM, the doors to the Opera House were flung open and a long line of teenage girls and adult women (all strangely wearing shirts and trousers) streamed in. It was to be expected that they were ready for a fight, for each of them carried some kind of futuristic weapon and a piece of rope that our sources tell us is called a 'Punjab lasso'._

_We were lucky enough to be able to talk shortly with one of these young women. She called herself a 'phan' and even wrote it out herself to be sure we had the spelling done correctly._

"_We're here to correct the grievous error made by the managers," she stated. "Richard and Moncharmin had the gall to fire one of their most important staff members!"_

_Oddly enough, they all refused to tell us on whose behalf they were fighting for._

"Well, that's good," said Erik. "I'll have to thank them for that later."

"Whoa!" said the Siren, pointing further down the page. "Read this!"

_Within two hours of these phans making their presence known, the managers, Monsieur Firmin Richard and Monsieur Armand Moncharmin, strode out of their office to look upon the damage done to the Opera._

"_We won't have any of these 'phans' telling us what to do! We'll fire whom we please!" said Richard, who seemed rather angry for some reason._

_Moncharmin, who was wearing a strange type of hat , chewing some kind of candy, and playing with a yo-yo, refused to comment._

_One of the Opera's former patrons, a Comte Philippe de Chagny, suddenly made his reappearance into the Opera at seven PM yesterday, after a mysterious six-month absence. The managers were overjoyed to see him, as they had mistakenly thought he was dead._

_Their joy quickly turned to shocked anger when he told them that the phans had kidnapped their former diva, Vicomtess Christine Daae, and her husband, Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, the Comte's younger brother, both of whom were back in Paris for a short time on vacation._

"If they hurt her, I'll kill them!" Erik roared, standing up abruptly. The paper went flying. He began feeling around the inside of his cloak. "Where's my Lasso . . . ?"

The Siren looked down at the scattered sheets of paper, then did a double take.

"Hey, Erik, look!" she said, bending down to pick up one of them and handed it over to him.

Erik peered at it. "First Annual Lassoing Contest?"

"It's going to be the tomorrow afternoon!" said the Siren merrily. "We should go! You'll be number one!"

"I don't think so," said Erik, handing back the paper. "I need to kill my phans."

"Aww," said the Siren, suddenly disappointed. "You'd have beat out all the competition, too." She looked at the picture again, then grinned mischievously. The first prize was a new type of portable piano. "Erik, look . . ."

Erik did so, then snatched the paper back from her and stared at it again to be sure that it was real.

"I've never seen anything like it," he murmured quietly, sitting back down in the chair to study the picture better.

"Does that mean we can go?" asked the Siren hopefully. After a moment of further concentration on the picture, Erik consented. The Siren cheered.

"Yay!"

"I really should go tell my phans to release Christine," mused Erik a little while later, putting the paper down and aimlessly staring off into space. The Siren, who had chosen to amuse herself by dusting the fireplace mantel, turned back around to face him, put her hands on her hips, and glared.

Imagine Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls trying to look angry. Angry, not upset. Yeah. That's it. Exactly.

"Your phans know better than to hurt her," said the Siren, attempting to ignore the insult she'd just been dealt in the narration.

"But do they?"

"Yes! They're smart girls! I mean, they worship _you_, don't they?"

"Good point."

Ayesha mewed and the Siren picked her up, much to the feline's distress. "Ayesha agrees with me. She says the girls know what's good when they see it."

Ayesha nodded.

Erik stood and moved to the window. "Thanks, girls. But I still do not feel right leaving Christine to their evil clutches."

"Evil!" cried many phans in the Opera simultaneously.

"All right!" cried a few select phans. "We're evil! Spiffing!"

The two women sighed and exchanged glances. They quickly exited the room and returned a moment later with an overhead projector-type thingy. I don't know where it came from.

Ayesha turned off the lights (which merely consisted of her sinking her teeth into the curtains and tugging them closed) while the Siren set everything up. She didn't do a very good job, and Ayesha had to direct her on what buttons to push.

". . . I was looking out that window," Erik protested.

The Siren and Ayesha, both sitting in chairs, motioned to a third chair for him to sit in. Given no other choice, he sat.

The Siren reached over to the player, and hit play.

The first thing they saw was what looked like four human-sized reptilian creatures and the first thing they heard was, "Yeah, she was all alone, with no friends and no phone."

Blushing, the Siren quickly leapt up and turned it off.

"Sorry about that," she quickly apologized, pulled out the reel and putting in a different one.

"What was that?" asked Erik.

The Siren's answer was mumbled.

"Pardon?"

"Turtles," she said. "It was the Ninja Turtles movie, okay?"

"What's that?"

"I got one of the phans to get it for me," answered the Siren carefully.

"You and Mikey would get along well," put in Ayesha, grinning slyly.

"Shut up," said the Siren, blushing again. Erik stared at her, confused, not being able to understand what Ayesha had just said.

"You like Puss in Boots!" the Siren continued. "Remember, you made me promise to take you to see _Shrek 2_."

Now Ayesha blushed, happy that she was furry and no one could actually see her blushing.

After a short pause, Erik asked, "What did I just miss?"

"Nothing." The Siren waved it away. "Just something _your cat_ made me swear to do." She stuck her tongue out at the feline as she managed to finish putting the new reel in.

They all watched as it profiled a history of Phantom of the Opera, explained the cultural impact on the world, learned how it opened up a whole new frame of mind, and then went on to dedicate an hour and a half to talking about the new breed of fangirls and the age-old hobby of fanfiction writing.

When it was over, all Erik could say was, "Wow. I had no idea I was _that_ popular."

The Siren beamed. "Now do you see? Most everyone doesn't blame Christine. They blame Raoul. Christine's in practically no danger from your phans."

"Nice to know I'm not the only one who despises Raoul," Erik mused thoughtfully.

"Now will you relax?" asked the Siren. Erik nodded. "Yay! Because we need to get out of here."

"Why?" asked an alarmed Erik, thinking maybe she'd heard something he didn't, due to her Elvish hearing, even though he too had Elvish hearing.

"We can't stay cooped up in this tiny apartment all day," stated the Siren. She wouldn't admit it, but she was beginning to miss the relative freedom of the Spooky Lake. "There's gotta be something fun we can do."

"There is somewhere we could go," began Erik slowly, unsure of how the Siren might react. He thought she didn't seem like the kind of person who might go for this kind of thing. He was wrong.

"Yeah, where?"

Erik picked up the newspaper. "Underneath the Lasso Contest ad, there's an ad for a new bookstore that opened up downtown."

"Cool," said the Siren. "I wonder if they'll have imported any manga yet?"

"Manga?"

"Japanese comics. My cousin sent me some for Christmas last year. Like Chobits and Magic Knight Rayearth! Oh, and Card Captor Sakura! I love Kero!"

Erik blinked once, twice. He still didn't understand a word of what she'd said, but he wasn't going to admit it.

"You want to come?" Erik asked instead as the Siren looked down at Ayesha.

"Sure do," said the Siren. "Ayesha wants to come too. She wants to know if they'll have Garfield."

Erik didn't even bother asking what a Garfield was. "I don't see why Ayesha can't come."

The cat mewed happily.

There was a knock on the door.

"Woo!" said the Siren, bolting towards the door. Erik turned around in his chair to face the door, and the Siren opened it.

"Hello!" bubbled the Siren happily, looking at the visitor.

The visitor stared back, being unaccustomed to seeing scantily clad blue girls with green hair. He blinked, and looked past her to see Erik, masked and still wearing his cape over his suit, generally looking like a vampire. Well, except for the mask. Ayesha hissed at him.

He blinked again. "Er . . . hello. I've come to say welcome to our building."

The Siren and Erik waved.

"And to say that I'm the manager here," the visitor continued. "If you have any questions about anything, don't hesitate to ask." He turned to quickly leave.

"Actually," said the Siren, causing the manager to stop and look back reluctantly, "do you have a pool? Because I'm part mermaid and –"

Erik, who had at once rushed to the door when the Siren had begun to ask about the pool, now clamped his hand over her mouth.

"What she means is, she may as well be part mermaid because she practically lives in water," Erik amended quickly. The Siren blinked, confused.

"Mmmmphh!" said the Siren.

"But she's . . ." the manager began, pausing in mid-sentence, unsure of how to continue without seeming too judgmental. After all, a number of odd creatures had been popping up lately. They were all girls, but they weren't all human. It was really very odd.

"Blue?"

The manager nodded wordlessly.

"It's a skin condition."

"Oh," said the manager. "Um . . . yes, we have a pool. It's at the back of the building, and we have deck chairs as well to tan on."

"Thanks!" said the Siren, whose mouth was now uncovered. The manager looked at them both for another second, then quickly hurried off towards the stairs. The Siren shut the door and Erik sank into a chair.

"We might as well begin looking for another apartment," Erik sighed.

"Why?" asked the Siren. "I like this place. It's nice!"

"Because we just made that man nervous about us being here," he answered.

"Why?" asked the Siren again. Erik stared at her, just a little startled at how dense the Siren could be.

"Just look at the two of us."

"So? I've seen weirder." The Siren shrugged.

"What could possibly be weirder than the two of us together?"

"Ask the phans," the Siren answered, disappearing into the bathroom to return a moment later with a towel. "I'm going to go check out that pool. You want to come with? We can still go check out that bookstore, of course," she added.

"Is there anyone else down there?" asked Erik apprehensively. The Siren looked out the window facing the back of the building.

"I don't think so," she answered. "I can't see it too well from here, though." She looked down at Ayesha, who had mewed a second before. "No one said you have to come, Ayesha."

Erik was left to presume that the cat had complained about the pool idea.

"I'll stay up here," he said. "You go have fun."

The Siren shrugged, then glared down at the cat. "Don't gloat so much, Ayesha, it's not healthy." She looked up at Erik. "She thinks you're staying here because she doesn't want to go."

"Oh," was all he dared say, at the risk of making one (or even both) of the two girls angry.

"Well," said the Siren a moment later, swinging her towel over her shoulder, "I'm going to go. Be back soon!" And she exited the apartment, closing the door behind her.

Erik looked at Ayesha, who gazed back happily.


	6. Attack of the Fandoms!

The Siren returned from the pool a couple of hours later.

"Have fun?" asked Erik, sitting in a chair and reading _The Lord of the Rings_. Outside the story, the Authoress swooned.

"Sure did!" she answered happily, thinking back to how she had just sat at the bottom of the deep end and freaked out all the bystanders who thought she'd drowned. They'd gotten quite a shock when she suddenly came out of the water, very much alive. And blue and seemingly not human.

Erik listened to his internal clock. "It's too late to go the bookstore today, but we'll go tomorrow morning, before the Lasso Contest. Would you like to out for dinner tonight?"

"Sure!" said the Siren. "Can I pick the place?"

Something in Erik's brain began to ring, warning him against saying yes to such a hazardous request, but Erik was a gentleman, and, as such, had to let the lady pick the dining place when she asked.

He'd come to regret saying yes to the Siren. For, you see, Denny's isn't the best place in the world to go to dinner to. It's more of a breakfast place. At least for me. Mmm, pancakes. And dinnertime at a breakfast place tends to bring out the weird people in town. Not that they wouldn't be considered 'weird people'.

**-**

When they entered the restaurant, the seating waitress sighed happily when she saw Erik coming towards her.

It took her a moment to pull herself out of her phangirl-induced trance, then snatched up a couple of menus. "If you'll follow me, I'll seat you."

She soon motioned to a table for them and bowed away after drooling over Erik for another minute or so.

A few tables over, a young woman looked up from her meal and her eyes strayed unexplainably to them. She gasped.

"What?" asked her husband. "What is it?" He glanced in the direction of her gaze, then narrowed his eyes angrily.

"What's he doing here?" she wondered to herself. "And why's he here with the Siren?" She stared uncertainly.

"Do you want to leave?" asked Raoul carefully.

"No, no," said Christine. "Well . . . maybe . . . It wouldn't be wise for him to see us . . . "

"Fries!" said the Siren happily. "I didn't think they really were French, but here they are."

"Are they good?" asked Erik, always on the lookout for some new delicacy.

"They're heavenly," said the Siren happily as a waiter approached them.

"What'll you have?" he asked after a minute of staring at them.

"Fries as an appetizer," they chimed together. The waiter nodded, stared a minute longer, then bowed out when he realized he was staring.

Somehow, no one noticed a bunch of teenage girls bombard the waiter, knock him out, steal his clothes, and throw him outside into the cold where he would be picked up by a Mothman, an Atlantean, and a Sasquatch, and offered a life of intrigue and mystery. But that is a tale for another time.

"I hate it when they stare," Erik muttered angrily, completely unaware that one of the biggest changes to the modern world was taking place almost right under his nose.

"Look at it this way," the Siren said, whipping out a couple of puppets that looked like herself and her boss. She slipped them on her hands and bobbed them around, then moved her fingers to make it seem like the Erik puppet was talking. "See, we're so spiffing that they can't possibly comprehend our coolness. It's not everyday that a mask-wearing vampire and a mermaid with legs walks into a restaurant." She made the puppets do a weird sort of disco-jig, then put them back into Hammerspace. Erik stared, thinking what a loony she was, then laughed at her stupidity.

Over at the de Chagny table, Christine stiffened. "I've never heard him laugh like that," she said softly. "Around me, it was always maniacal."

"It's like chimes," said one of the phans slowly. The other phan nodded.

Raoul threw some money on the table, grabbed her hand, and literally dragged her away, thereby escaping the phans, who didn't notice. They were both leaning on the table, happily drooling over Erik.

The food came to Erik and the Siren, carried by a waitress. She set their food down in such a way that when she withdrew her hand, it brushed against Erik's sleeve. She sighed happily.

When the waitress had gone, after a long hesitation in which she gazed at Erik and he stared back at her, Erik stared at the Siren, waiting for an explanation. When she merely kept eating, Erik had to ask.

"That was a very strange girl, our waiter," he said.

"She's a phan," said the Siren between mouthfuls.

"How did you know? The sleeve thing could have happened by accident."

"Didn't you see?" said the Siren. "She had a Phantom shirt on and wore a bracelet that had masks and roses on it."

"Why do I have the feeling I'm completely in the dark about all of this?"

"'Cuz you are," answered the Siren simply. "You gonna eat your fries, or can I have 'em?"

Erik pushed his plate over to her. The Siren squealed happily and dumped his fries onto her plate.

"Will you please inform me of what is going on?"

"No."

"Why?"

"You don't know how many phans are around every day, and I think the number might make you burrow into the earth to hide. And they'd still be able to find you. It's the way the Universe works." She finished shoveling the fries into her mouth and swallowed them.

Erik did not like this new knowledge, just as the Siren had suspected.

"Even in the house on the lake?"

"Yup." She glanced around. "Waiter!"

A different girl appeared next to the table, surprising Erik.

"Yes?" asked the girl in what she hoped was her most musical voice.

"Can you bring some more fries?" asked the Siren.

"In a minute," said the girl, grinning at Erik.

"Isn't it unhealthy for you girls to be so . . ." Erik searched for the word, still finding it hard to believe that he actually had obsessed fans. Or rather, phans.

"Infatuated with him," supplied the Siren, waving her fork. Yes, she uses a fork to eat fries. Go figure.

Erik wordlessly nodded.

"We can't help it!" cried the phan. "We love you so much!"

"Fries, please."

"Oh, fine," huffed the phan, disappearing.

"I think we should leave," Erik said. The Siren looked up, surprised.

"But I'm not done eating."

"I'm uncomfortable here."

She grinned. "Who isn't, when so many of their fans are around?" She held up her hands and counted off on her fingers as she continued. "The Ninja Turtles are always being bombarded by their fans, but they like it. Zim and Dib from Invader Zim have thousands of fans, and so do the Irken leaders, the Tallest." She paused. "As a matter of fact, they _are _cool. Anyway, a lot of the DragonBall Z characters are always being bombarded by fangirls, all the bishonen from Yu-Gi-Oh! have that problem, every X-Man alive has hundreds of fans, the Pirates of the Caribbean have to deal with it, and the Middle-earthians, and the Discworldians as well. As well as practically everyone else." She thought for a minute. "Everyone has the problem, and they deal with it their own way. Most enlist the Official Fanfiction Universities to help them out. The Discworld wizards prefer to turn their fangirls into gerbils, but that's just their thing. And a certain prince of Kyrria has that problem too, I'm sure." She turned to wink at the phans and watched as a couple of them blushed. She turned back to look him in the eyes. "You're not alone," she concluded seriously.

If Erik's eyes had been any wider, they'd have popped out and looked like yellow marbles on the tabletop. A group of phans had drifted closer and closer to them during the Siren's little speech, if you can call it that, nodding each time another of their favorite fandoms was mentioned. When she told Erik he wasn't alone, all the phans burst out laughing at her unusual seriousness.

"How do you know all this?" asked Erik when he finally found his voice. "How do you know all these people?"

The Siren motioned to the phans. "They told me about many of them. But as for how we all know, that's a secret." She tapped her nose conspiratorially. The phans grinned, keeping the secret.

Erik merely sat there, staring around at all his phans, who beamed back at him happily. He wished he could disappear. Or kill them, but something, that something feeling very alien to him, told him he really, really shouldn't. He wondered why.

The phans began beeping. At Erik's curious look, they all held up their cell phones as explanation and hit the button to answer the callers.

They paled considerably.

"Samara," said a phan from the back of the group, "we didn't watch the tape and you know it! We only watched the movie _based _on the tape!"

"Yeah," added another phan, "you said yourself that doesn't count."

"And I haven't even seen that movie," said a phan on the right of the group. "I've only seen the spoof of the movie that's based on the tape!"

They listened to their phones. After a moment, they hung up and grinned at the Phantom and Siren sheepishly.

"She really likes saying 'seven days'," explained a phan as the phones began beeping again. They answered their phones carefully, wondering if the dead girl had called back for some reason.

They gasped.

"Weapon A will be here tomorrow morning!" they said simultaneously, then dashed out the door, nearly knocking over most of the other customers' tables. Erik looked questioningly at the Siren, who had dug back into her fries once she was finished talking.

"It's part of their plan to get you back into the Opera," was all she'd say.


	7. The APPLICANTS!

From here on (and most likely throughout the rest of the phic), there'll be references to SOAP Opera. If you haven't read it, the link is in the last chapter. I don't think you'll need to have read it to understand this, though. Anyway, Mina and Morwenna are my own characters. And I'm not too sure I'm pleased with that . . .

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Chapter Seven: The APPLICANTS! (also known as "I rather mis-named the last chapter and this chapter rightly deserves the title of Attack of the Fandoms, on account of this chapter being the Crossover To End All Crossovers." There are no less then seventeen fandoms making a cameo in this chapter alone, and there are around 30 non-Phantom characters running around. Um.)

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Richard and Moncharmin sat in their office, watching their first applicant carefully. He was the complete opposite of Erik - young, handsome, and nowhere near as spiffy. That, and he reminded them much of Raoul.

"So you're rich?" asked Richard slowly.

The applicant nodded. "But I need a job, to keep in my wife's good graces."

"So we'll have to pay you a decent amount of money?" asked a very disappointed Richard.

"Cossie would kill me if I returned home without a good job," said the applicant.

"Monsieur," said a now disappointed Richard, "what virtues do you think you could bring to this job?"

The applicant thought for a moment. "Well, I know a lot about Napoleon . . . and I'm pretty good at finding a place to hide right before I'm spotted."

Moncharmin waved him away. Richard stared at Moncharmin for a second, and when Moncharmin waved again, Richard sighed.

"Monsieur, we must decline your application. My partner doesn't seem too pleased with your knowledge of Napoleon."

"He's short!" cried Moncharmin. "Short and evil! The two don't mix well!"

"Fine," said Marius haughtily, and stomped out.

Richard rubbed his temples tiredly. "Send in the next one, Remy."

"Certainly," said Remy, opening the door. A dark-haired teenaged girl strolled in, sat down, crossed her arms, and glared at them.

The managers stared at her, perplexed, then laughed.

"What are you laughing at?" she demanded.

"You're a child," said Moncharmin, wiping tears of laughter away.

"I'll have you know that in another Universe, I'm to be the Phantom's successor," she spat. "And I'm not a child. I prefer 'young lady.'"

The managers leaned forward, curious. "How so?"

She stood indignantly, giving herself quite a height boost. "I'm his daughter, that's why!"

Richard and Moncharmin blinked, then laughed even harder. "The Phantom . . . having a daughter! Woo, that's good."

She glared at them. Then she stalked to the door and pulled it open to leave. Before she did leave, however, she turned back.

"You'll pay for this insult," she said, then stomped out.

"Other Universes," the managers giggled. "That's a new one."

Outside, Remy bowed to her. "I apologize, milady, those nitwits are too stupid to recognize the Phantomess when they see her."

Mina grinned. "Have you seen my aunt?"

"She's in the Opera's restaurant, flirting with another of the applicants."

"Thank you," she said, leaving to go to the café.

Back in the office, Richard bellowed for the next interviewee. When Remy opened the door to admit the next doomed person, what looked like a flaming yellow and red raptor's eye floated in.

The managers couldn't help staring in wonder. They'd never seen anything like this.

"We're here for the job opening," said the man next to the Eye. The managers hadn't noticed him before, for obvious reasons.

Richard coughed. "Ahem. What's your name?"

"I'm the Mouth of Sauron and this is Sauron himself."

The Eye turned to glare at him.

"Erm . . . the Dark Lord himself," the Mouth of Sauron quickly amended. "The _only_ Dark Lord, despite what Voldemort, Darth Vader, and Chuckles the Silly Piggy may think."

The Eye looked happy, if that's even possible.

"Yes, well," said Richard uneasily, wondering why the name made him queasy. "You look like a true Phantom, but we need someone who is . . . human."

"Discrimination!" stated the Mouth of Sauron. "Just because he currently doesn't have a human shape, you're not even going to consider us for the job! Disembodied Dark Lords need to earn money just like anyone else!" Sauron turned his one-eyed glare on the managers.

Richard and Moncharmin cowered together in a corner of the office.

Sauron and the Mouth of Sauron soon left, muttering something about not wanting to work for a couple of weenies, anyway.

A full ten minutes passed before Richard dared look up. He poked Moncharmin.

"Armand, they're gone." He looked back at his partner. "You can stop hugging me now."

Moncharmin fell back, his face red. "I wasn't . . . I mean . . ."

"It's okay," said Richard, patting him on the shoulder as he stood up. "I think we're in a phic with an Authoress who thinks we're . . ." He let it hang, hoping Moncharmin would catch the implication.

Moncharmin turned even redder. "We are _not!_"

"I know," said Richard morosely. "I know." He pushed a button on his intercom.

"If you two are done cuddling, I'll send in the next applicant," came the smug voice of Remy over the com.

Now Richard turned red. "We were _not!_"

"Sure," said Remy in a tone that suggested he knew otherwise. "I'm sending the next applicant in."

Moving far too fast for the managers to see, a furry blue head peeked in through the open door and ducked back out. A puff of blue smoke appeared in the corner of the room. It didn't take long to clear and when it did, the managers found themselves looking upon a blue demon with a spade-tipped tail.

"Hi!" Nightcrawler greeted happily.

"Hi," Richard replied. "How did you do that?"

"I can teleport."

"Cool!" yelled Moncharmin, who was an X-Men fan. "But we can't hire you."

Nightcrawler's face fell. "Why not?"

"Because you have to know where you're going. It'll take you years to memorize the layout of this building."

"Oh," said Nightcrawler sadly. He trudged to the door.

"Can I have your autograph, though?" asked Moncharmin, whipping out a Notebook and Pen.

"Sure!" agreed Nightcrawler, promptly signing it. Then he walked out the door, being careful to avoid the phans that were swarming all over the building.

"Next!" bellowed Richard.

A cat strolled through the door. It was wearing boots and a cape and also had a sword on its belt.

No, this was not Puss in Boots.

This was Tsarmina, evil dictatress and all around bitch.

"I'd like to apply for the job," she purred. But before the two managers could reply, the feline abruptly disappeared with a shriek of surprise, and the eerie maniacal laughter of one who is about to get revenge for a wrong done to a favorite character echoed through the office.

Richard and Moncharmin blinked.

"Did that . . ." Moncharmin began to ask.

"We saw nothing," said Richard firmly. "Nothing out of the ordinary happened just now."

"Then what about the entire day?" challenged Moncharmin. "This whole day has been weird."

Richard ignored him, and was about to call for the next applicant when he saw something sitting on the chair.

It was a stump. And it had a face.

"Moncharmin," began Richard slowly. "What is _that_?"

Moncharmin looked. "It's tree stump."

"But how did it get in here!"

"Maybe Nightcrawler left it behind?"

"Why would he leave a stump behind!"

"I don't know." Moncharmin shrugged. They eyed the stump carefully and though they didn't actually see anything, they both would later swear that the stump smiled at them.

Richard pressed a button on his intercom.

"Someone's played a joke on us, Remy," he said. "Come get this tree stump out of our office."

Remy walked in a moment later and over to the chair. "Oh, how ya hangin', Stump?"

The tree stump didn't answer, but Remy seemed to have gotten something out of it.

"Great!" said Remy. "Look, you can stick with me for the rest of the day, then we'll go see a movie later, okay?"

The stump said not a word.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe Shrek 2?"

Silence.

"Oh . . . cruelty to trees, right . . . Spider-man 2?"

No sound came from the general direction of the stump.

"Well, we'll see what's listed in the paper later." Remy picked Stump up and left.

Right after he walked out, a small rodent waltzed in.

"I'm not a rodent!" said Timon indignantly. "I'm a meerkat!"

"No," said Richard flatly. "We will not hire a talking mouse. If word got out that our Ghost was a rodent, we'd never hear the end of it."

Timon made a rude gesture and stomped out.

Richard instructed Remy to send in another applicant.

A short man with gravity-defying hair walked in, looking like he owned the place, and stood next to the door, glaring for all he was worth. Which was quite a lot, actually.

Richard glared back.

This went on for a while.

After fifteen minutes of this glaring match, Moncharmin looked at his nifty digital watch.

"Look," Moncharmin said, tapping his nifty digital watch in the universal gesture of either 'what time is it?' or 'this is taking _way _too long' and sighed. "I think you'd be a great asset to us, but I have this nagging feeling that you and my partner would be at odds all the time." He made a shooing motion. "Sorry."

Vegeta glared some more. "Fine," said he. "But you'll regret not hiring the greatest Saiyan of all time!" And he flew off, giving the managerial office a new sunroof.

Richard and Moncharmin stared at the hole in shock.

"How much is that going to take to fix?" Moncharmin finally asked.

"A lot," mumbled Richard, who sounded like he was ready to cry. Moncharmin pressed the intercom.

"Next!"

A humanoid man with two heads and three arms waltzed in and promptly made himself comfortable in the chair.

"'Sup?" he asked. "I heard there was going to be a party here."

Despite the other odd people they'd seen today, this one took the cake. Mostly because none of the other applicants had extra body parts.

They stared.

"Cat got your tongue?" The applicant chuckled to himself.

Richard recovered first, mostly because his shock at what Vegeta had done was now turning to anger.

"Are you here for the job opening or not!" he demanded.

"Whoa, cool off, man," said the applicant. "Wait, a job?" The head that wasn't talking went pale, wide-eyed, and open-mouthed. "Man, I didn't come here looking for a job! I heard there were some cool cats in this neighbourhood!"

The managers didn't understand the lingo, and so stared some more. But the applicant didn't notice. Currently, all three of his arms were waving around.

"I was President of the Galaxy once," the applicant continued. "I don't need to work on some low-bit planet like this, yeah?"

The managers had the feeling they were being insulted, but before they could reply, a phan walked by the door. And was promptly inside the room, shaking the applicant's third arm.

"Wow, is it really _you_!" the phan bubbled.

"The one and only, baby!" The applicant flashed the phan his best smile.

"I didn't think you really had two heads, but you do!"

"Of course I do!" said the applicant and then, suddenly suspicious, added, "Why? What have you heard?"

The phan tugged on the arm, pulling him towards the door. "You've gotta read these books. They're all about you!"

Himself was Zaphod Beeblebrox's favorite subject. "All about me? Who on this out of the way planet decided to write about me?"

"I'll show you!" said the phan, leading him out of the room. "Though, they're really more about Arthur and Ford than you . . ."

From down the corridor came a shout of, "Ford Prefect _RAWKS_!"

"The misinformed alien or the car?"

"Pft, the Betelgeusian, of course!"

The phan and Zaphod ignored that little conversation.

"Ford I know. Arthur . . . the ape man!"

"Yep."

"How is he more interesting than me! I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox!"

They passed out of earshot at that moment, and the managers sat for a moment before someone walked in, unbidden.

A tall man wearing blue-green full body armor and carrying a couple of blasters at his sides appeared. His helmet had a T-shaped visor splitting the center.

The managers both tried to climb out the window at the same time.

That obviously didn't work and so they sat on the floor, staring up at the clone in fear.

"I'm here for the job," said the 'applicant' in his gravelly voice.

The managers relaxed a little.

"Are you –" Richard began.

"Boba Fett," said the bounty hunter.

"Oh, you're not an applicant!" Richard said, belatedly realizing that Boba was here for an entirely different reason.

"Can I have your autograph?" asked Moncharmin, holding up the Notebook and Pen from before. Boba signed it quickly.

Richard, realizing they weren't really in danger, hopped up and slid into his chair in one movement, then began shuffling some papers in a weak attempt to appear professional.

Moncharmin took back his Notebook and Pen and stashed them away to sell on eBay later.

Boba sat down in the applicants' chair.

"So what does this job entail?" he questioned. "And you realize my services aren't cheap."

"We do know that," said Richard, setting his papers aside and folding his hands on the desk. Moncharmin shut the door and Richard flicked off the intercom. "But, ah, exactly how much would we have to pay you?"

Boba Fett told them his outrageously high prices for off-planetary pursuit.

The managers shook their heads and told him that his quarry was definitely on-planet.

Boba was disappointed that there wouldn't be much of a chase.

Then the managers began to tell him how the phans had kidnapped their star diva (they'd fired Carlotta) and how they needed the best tracker they could find to get her back. The police and detectives couldn't help much – the phans were elusive. Even Inspector Javert, who had seventeen years of experience in tracking one specific person down, would have a hard time with this case.

Boba agreed to take on the job. Next came the money issue. This was gonna be hard.

Richard was being really very stingy with his money, but Boba was demanding quite a hefty sum for his services.

Finally, Moncharmin pushed Richard out of the chair and agreed to whatever price Boba set.

Richard began bawling.

Boba stood up, thanked Moncharmin for being easier to deal with than Richard, Jabba, and Vader combined, and left to begin his hunt.

Richard continued sobbing on the floor at the loss of half his savings. _This had better be worth it_, the rational side of his brain was thinking.

Moncharmin sat in Richard's chair and called for the next applicant.

A tall, hooded, and cloaked man opened the door, wandered in, and sat down in the chair. He didn't look up.

After a moment, Moncharmin began to wonder if he was sleeping.

Or dead.

Moncharmin stood up and walked around the desk to study the applicant. After a moment, he poked his shoulder.

The applicant began to stir, and Moncharmin jumped back warily. After all, most of the other applicants had been strange and powerful. But mostly strange.

Richard finally regained most of his senses and sat down in his chair, rubbing his red eyes with a napkin.

The applicant raised his head and looked the managers in the eyes.

"I hear you're offering a job with excellent pay?" asked Saruman, throwing back his hood.

Richard nodded, totally unaffected by that voice. After all, he and Moncharmin had dealt with Erik nearly every day, and his voice was just as pleasant to listen to as this one.

"Yes, we are," he answered, still sniffing a little. "But it involves a lot of athletic ability. Can you handle that?"

"A Maia can handle anything," said Saruman confidently.

"Have you been convicted of any crimes?" asked Moncharmin suddenly, remembering a book he'd once found in the depths of the Opera and taken home to read.

Saruman looked uncomfortable.

"Well, yes . . . Manwë sentenced me to four thousand years doing community service, then released me on parole. I need a job, though, or he will make me do janitor work in the Halls of Mandos, and that is not a pleasant thing to have to do."

This didn't sound very pleasant to Richard and Moncharmin either. But they really didn't want to have a convict living in their Opera, even if he was free now. Somewhere far away, Jean Valjean suddenly felt very sad.

"Sorry, monsieur," said Richard. "We have to ask you to leave."

Saruman nodded in an oddly good-natured way, stood, and left. On the way out, he could be heard muttering something like, "Stupid Men . . . Should have just killed them all myself . . ."

Richard bonked his head on his desk, then repeatedly banged it a few more times for good measure.

"Sir, some more applicants have managed to get by the phans," said Remy over the intercom.

"Kill me now," muttered Richard. Moncharmin picked up a safety pin and unhinged it as Richard lifted his head.

"You can't kill me with that!" Richard pointed to the pin.

Moncharmin looked wounded. "Can too. Safety pins are very deadly."

Richard groaned as Frank the Pug walked in.

"Gimme the job!" said the alien. "I can do it!"

"Get. Out," said Richard.

"Fine," said Frank angrily, turning to trot out. "You'll be hearing from the MiB about denying me equal opportunity!"

"Equal what?" asked Richard.

"It's some new thing the government has come up with," offered Moncharmin unhelpfully. "We have to offer this position to absolutely everyone and consider them equally. That's what the guy with the flaming eyeball was on about."

Richard groaned again. That safety pin was beginning to look real friendly . . .

The ground began shaking. The managers both made to dive under the desk, and consequently got wedged in.

"Get out!" commanded Richard. "This is my desk!"

"But mine's been sent for repairs!" whined Moncharmin, not mentioning that the damage had been caused by his new yoyo hobby. Their predicament didn't last, as a giant brown hand lifted the desk up.

"Excuse me," said the latest applicant, an allosaurus wearing a blue uniform. "I heard there was a job opening here?"

Richard and Moncharmin squeeked their affirmation.

Allo nodded. "Good. The Secret Scouts told us we needed to earn money if we plan to stay here and beat the Tyrannos once and for all. They recently visited this country on a field trip and suggested we try studying the different cultures of Earth." He looked around. "Though, it looks like we might have accidentally time-traveled . . ." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I'll bet this is the work of Genghis Rex!"

Richard and Moncharmin squeeked again. Allo lowered the desk and offered a gloved hand to the managers. Richard slowly shook it.

"Are you okay?" asked Allo, genuinely concerned. The managers just wished he'd stop talking – they didn't like looking at those very sharp teeth in a carnivorous dinosaur's mouth.

They didn't seem to realize that Allo had no plans at all to eat them.

"Hmm," said Allo, studying the managers. From what he knew about humans, this was fear. And he was apparently causing it, though accidentally. "I think I'll just go. . . and track down Genghis Rex to find out what his latest fiendish plan is." He went to the door and somehow managed to squeeze through without tearing the door off its hinges.

After the ground stopped shaking from Allo's footsteps, the managers began breathing again.

"Oh, my God!" said Moncharmin. "I think that thing was planning to eat us!"

"Was not!" retorted a phangirl, standing in the doorway brandishing her chainsaw. "No Dinosaucer would harm another sentient being, or any living creature." She paused. "I wonder if Ichy is out there!" And she took off, running towards the exit, trying to catch up with Allo before he left.

The managers, thoroughly freaked out by now, considered closing the Opera for the day and attempting to get the phans to leave. And firing Piangi while they were at it.

"I am the terror that flaps in the night . . ."

"Did you say that?" both managers asked. "No!" they said together. They began looking thoroughly freaked out all over again.

"I am the fly that won't stop buzzing around your head . . ."

The managers looked around wildly, attempted to pinpoint the source of the voice. They couldn't.

". . . I am . . . DARKWING DUCK!" A puff of purple smoke appeared, then began to clear quickly. When it was gone a moment later, a small white mallard stood near the door, wearing a vest, a fedora, and a cape.

And a mask.


	8. The Contest, the two M's find their way

The same morning, after stopping off at the bookstore, Erik and the Siren were on their way to the lasso contest, joined by Nadir, Darius, Madame Giry, and Meg. The Siren was ecstatic to be going to a festival, but Erik was wary, as usual. In the midst of all the happy-go-lucky festivalgoers, the eyes of several phans watched them.

The Siren broke away from the group to look at a booth. "Hey, it's an archery contest!" She looked back at Erik. "Gimme money! I know I can win that giant stuffed bear!" She pointed at the fearsome-looking polar bear that bore a strange resemblance to the one on _LOST_.

"You have money."

"But you haven't paid me since we left the Opera."

"But I'm buying your food and I just bought you some of that manga of yours," he countered. "And we need to conserve our funds until we figure out a way to make money."

"Fine," said the Siren, then jogged over to the booth and snatched up a bow. "Hee, I'm Legolas!"

"Who?" asked an interested Meg.

"Remind me to give you a copy of a certain book in about seventy years," said the Siren, aiming at the Target logo. "Unless, of course, by some freak accident in the space-time continuum, we're all thrown into Middle-earth." She grinned.

"Won't you be dead in seventy years?"

"Hey, I'm not that old," the Siren protested.

"You look around twenty-five. That means you'd be ninety-five in seventy years."

"Our life-spans are different than yours."

"Then how old are you?" Meg challenged. The Siren released the arrow, hitting the center of the bulls-eye.

"Gimme a polar bear!" she demanded of the booth-drone, then turned to Meg. "Ya really wanna know?"

Meg nodded.

"Two hundred and fifteen."

Meg gaped.

"I knew you'd say that," teased the Siren, dancing off with her new bear.

Meg stared.

The Siren happily danced back up to the group and showed off her prize.

No one was really interested.

—

It seemed to be Christine's fate to run into Erik everywhere she went. Or, perhaps, the Authoress is merely teasing her. Pick the explanation you like.

She buried her face into Raoul's overcoat. "Let's get away from here." She looked back up. "I don't understand. Why hasn't Meg told me any of this?"

Raoul took her hand and led her away before she did something foolish. Several of the phans nearby snickered mischievously.

"What?" shrieked Mina, who was also there with Morwenna, when a phan casually strolled up and informed her of the recent events. She shivered. "I'm glad I was born in the reality where Mom and Dad are married." She looked thoughtful. "Hey, do you think I'm somewhere here as a different person?"

Morwenna shrugged. "Possibly. But I know I'm Madeleine's aunt, no matter where we are. Erik would probably think I'm her ghost if he saw me." She chuckled. Then paused. "Heh, maybe I should go _find_ Madeleine and kick her butt here too . . ."

"I want to know if I'm here," said Mina, glancing around as if she expected to see her doppelganger wandering by.

"There's a good way to figure that out," said Morwenna. "We'll ask Erik's phans to help."

"Does it involve being near Erik?" asked a phan slyly. When Morwenna shook her head, the phan's grin turned into a scowl. "We won't help then."

"I'll put in a good word with Dad for you all back home," offered Mina. The phans considered this.

"We'll keep an eye out for you . . . or her, or whatever," a phan grudgingly assented. "But we're not going to go out of our way to look."

"Thank you." Mina glanced around. "Do any of you know where Aunt Siren is?"

In one fluid move, all the phans wordlessly pointed to where Erik was. We can be used like compasses!

"Thanks," said Mina, and she and Morwenna headed off in that direction, the phans trailing along behind them.

Back at the place where the lasso contest was going to be held, Erik and Company leaned on the fence, waiting for the winner to be announced. Several times before the contest, Erik had tried to run away, deciding he didn't really want to be here after all but his posse had chased after him and dragged him back.

He had not been looking forward to the contest, which he had managed to do okay in, and was really not looking forward to the announcement.

"Calm down," said Nadir, realizing Erik was getting dangerously antsy. Dangerous as in murderously dangerous. "Killing someone won't help your nerves any."

"Wanna bet?" came the soft reply, so low Nadir almost missed it. Almost.

"What?" asked Nadir. "Did you just offer to bet on whether or not killing people can calm one's nerves?"

Too late did Erik realize his mistake. "Um . . . No?"

"You did!" cried the Persian, pointing a finger at Erik. "Well, buddy, I'll take you up on that offer!"

Almost simultaneously, the other members of the group blinked. This was not how they were expecting Nadir to react.

A phrase unfit to type here went through Erik's mind. This wasn't good. Sure, he _had _killed people, but not since Persia. So he was kind of rusty. And Nadir thought he had killed both Buquet and Piangi (who merely took a leave of absence to lose some weight), since he had never told his friend about the cover-ups, instead wanting to keep up the pretense of being an all-powerful malevolent Phantom . . . what was he going to do?

He certainly couldn't back down — he had to keep his reputation intact if there was absolutely any hope of regaining his job.

Unfortunately, he was about to find out that there was no hope at all of that happening. Before he could give Nadir's challenge a positive answer, one of Meg's ballet chums (Jammes, if you want to know) came running up, breathless with excitement. "The Opera's been demolished!"

"Oh, crap," said several of the phans, who were there to admire Erik's Punjabbing skills. They ran away to go see the damage caused to the Opera. And to see if they could help in any way.

"What!" Erik shouted.

"Yeah," said Jammes. "This giant . . . cat thing showed up and just plowed through it. Like this!" And she demonstrated by stomping around in the dirt.

"And now I'm out of a job!" Madame Giry shrieked. "How'll me and Meg survive!"

"Though it serves those morons right," muttered Erik.

In the middle of their conversation, a Random Festival Employee pushed his way into the center of the group and held up a trophy.

"Congratulations, Erik . . . um . . ." the little man looked confused.

"Just Erik," said Erik.

"Oh. Well, congratulations!" he said, holding up the trophy. "You're our first place winner!"

Erik took the trophy. The RFE stood for a minute, obviously waiting for a 'thank you', but when he didn't receive one after forty-five seconds, took off as fast as he could. Erik and Company watched him go.

"So what do we do?" asked Meg fearfully once the RFE was out of sight.

"We'll have to find another Opera," said Madame Giry. "It's the only thing I can do."

"Or we can all go to New York!" said the Siren suddenly. Everyone turned to stare at her.

"You're not getting any ideas from that crappy sequel, are you?" accused Erik. The Siren's eyes widened.

"Oh, no! Never! I just mean, we should go to New York!"

"Why?" asked everyone together.

At this, the Siren faltered. "I . . . I dunno . . ."

Erik gave her another look before looking at everyone else. "We should go take a look at the Opera."

From where they were hiding behind a giant statue of a flying cow, the two magical relatives of Erik exchanged glances.

"The Opera being demolished was supposed to trigger acceptance of the Siren's suggestion," muttered Morwenna. "What went wrong . . . ?"

"Just shows that you can't always script stuff out," gloated Mina, thinking of her own personal intrusion into this fic. Other than her cameo of applying for the Opera Ghost job, the little weenie wasn't supposed to be in _this_ phic, but nooo . . . she just had to find some way to stay in.

The older woman sat down to consider this. After all, she wasn't supposed to be here either. After another minute, Mina started.

"They're coming this way!" she hissed. Morwenna hopped to her feet and pulled her grandniece aside just as Erik and Company passed right by them. The group didn't seem to notice the two as they stared at them, but the Siren stopped and beckoned to them.

The three waited to talk until the rest of the group was a bit of a distance away.

"I suggested it," said the Siren. "What went wrong?"

"Can't control the script," gloated Mina once more. Grr.

"Shush," said Morwenna, not wanting her niece and the Authoress to get into a fight. "We'll just have to wait for things to take their natural course." She grinned devilishly. "In the meantime, I'm going to go find Madeleine."

She walked away.

"Aunt Morwenna!" called Mina, chasing after her. "Wait up! Can I help you exact some vengeance on Grandma Madeleine?"

-

Madeleine was sitting in a rocking chair, knitting a sock. She was thinking, once again, how stupid she was not to chase after her only baby and get him to come home. The child had probably been dead for years.

Or so she thought.

One of Douglas Adams' freak wormholes opened up in the space-time continuum, carrying the last two words of Mina's question on the wind for just over forty-two miles to reach Madeleine's ears.

"_Grandma Madeleine?"_

Madeleine looked up, dropping her half-finished sock on the porch of Rouen's Old Folks' Home. It seemed to her that no one else heard the phantom words, not even the young employees whose hearing was excellent. She glanced around, wondering who had said that, when the words came again from no apparent source and for no apparent reason.

"_Grandma Madeleine?"_

Madeleine screamed in her overly dramatic way.

-

"Sure, honey," said Morwenna proudly. "I can begin your instruction in the fragile art of Exacting Revenge."

"Dad already told me some of it," said Mina, hurrying to catch up to her aunt. "He showed me how to cut chandeliers properly."

Morwenna nodded. "That's good. Very good. But there's much more to it than that."

"Such as planning and getting all the right tools," offered Mina. Morwenna nodded again.

"Yes, dear. But there's still more." She continued walking until the she reached the outskirts of the fair grounds, then pulled out her wand. She said the correct words, and conjured up an intangible map of Rouen. She pointed to Rouen's Old Folks Home. "There she is."

"What are you going to do to her?"

"Nothing really," lied Morwenna. "Just show her that what she did was wrong and against our family's code."

"We have a code?" asked Mina excitedly.

"Sure do," answered Morwenna. "After all, our family is almost as prominent as the de Chagnys."

"Is not," said Philippe, from where he was suddenly leaning against a tree in a casual way. He's good at that. Morwenna glared.

"Is too."

"Is _not,_" said Philippe forcefully.

"Is _too_," responded Morwenna just as forcefully.

"We're the most prominent family in Paris. No other family even comes close."

"Well, you must not have heard of the Flabbergastors, then."

Philippe gasped. "You're one of _them_? I thought they --"

Morwenna nodded smugly. "Yep. Last one too, with that name. I never married. My sister cut off connections with the family, and my niece continued that."

Philippe bowed. "I'm sorry, ladies, I had no idea."

"That's because everyone thought the family died out," said Morwenna. "Mina, here -" she pushed her great grand-niece forward "- is the youngest. Just with a different name, of course."

Philippe looked puzzled.

"The Phantom of the Opera is one too," added Morwenna.

"No way!"

"Way."

Philippe bowed again. "Well, you all shall have to come have dinner at my house one evening."

"Only if Raoul and Christine aren't there," said Mina and Morwenna together.

Philippe gave them a look that clearly said "Why not?"

"Long story," the women answered, and sat down on the grass to tell it.

–

"Amazing," said Philippe, leaning back against a tree and thinking of how many times his brother had managed to escape Death, all for the sake of love.

Speaking of love, he needed to make an appointment with La Sorelli to go out to dinner next Saturday. It would be their one-year anniversary of dating. She'd already accused him of forgetting their six-month anniversary, because the phans had kidnapped him. And speaking of the phans, how was he going to get away from them? They'd want to come along to 'chaperone' the date. Stupid girls.

"So where are you going?" asked Philippe, pulling himself out of his thoughts. "You're rather far from the fair grounds."

"We could ask you the same question," said Mina.

"I had to get away from the phans," answered Philippe. "Sometimes, I think they belong in a mental institution."

Mina nodded, having lived her whole life with the phans. Morwenna agreed too, having lived the last few months kinda around them.

"We're going to see my niece," answered Morwenna. "We have to talk to her."

"Why don't you get a carriage?" asked Philippe.

"Yeah, why didn't we?" asked Mina, who hadn't thought about that for some reason.

Morwenna looked distinctly uncomfortable and mumbled her answer.

"Pardon?"

"Don't like horses," came the reply. "They're evil."

A second passed, then both Mina and Philippe laughed. Philippe soon realized whom he was laughing at and stopped, but Mina kept at it, until she was lying on the ground, giggling with what remained of her breath.

"It's not _that _funny," said Morwenna, glaring.

"Is too," chuckled Mina. "I'd have never imagined you afraid of anything, least of all horses!" And she was consumed by laughter again.

"Shows what you know."

"Did you have a bad experience with them?" asked Philippe, thinking of his own bad experience with potatoes and erasers when he was a kid.

Don't ask.

Morwenna nodded. "Shadowfax never liked me. And when I attempted to pet César, he tried to chew my hair." As if for reassurance, she reached up and touched her hair. "And there was that time with that Unicorn colony . . . even they didn't like me."

No one brought up the only reason why the Unicorns might not like her.

Mina stopped giggling. "César tried to eat you?"

Morwenna nodded.

"Well, I'll have to have a word with him," said Mina determinedly.

"You can talk to horses?" asked Philippe, startled.

"Sure, much the same way Harry talks to snakes. It's not as well known, because talking to horses isn't as creepy as talking to snakes. I dunno why." Mina shrugged. "I like snakes."

"They're cool," Morwenna agreed.

"But you don't like horses?" asked Philippe.

"A snake never tried to eat my hair."

"Good point."

"I guess I'll get into a carriage if I don't have to get _anywhere _near the horses," she relented, because the plot has to get moving.

"Grand!" said Philippe, standing up. He whistled, and a driver drove his horses and a carriage out from behind a tent, where they'd just happened to be waiting. Mina stood up before she had a bad experience with horses and Morwenna leapt aside, then backed up a few more feet for good measure.

"Come on, Aunt Morwenna," said Mina, who had the door to the carriage open. Morwenna eyed the horses warily.

"I don't know . . ."

"Come along," said Philippe, who was beginning to think this was more than a little irrational. He grinned. "They won't eat you."

Morwenna glared.

"Sorry. But you don't want to walk the whole way, do you?"

"I could use the exercise," said Morwenna pointedly. Mina sighed, then walked over to her and literally pushed her into the carriage.

"Hey!" she protested.

"See?" said Mina, gesturing to the inside of the carriage. "The horses can't get back here."

"They'll crash us because I'm here," muttered her aunt. Mina rolled her eyes.

"Want a relaxation spell?"

"No!" shouted Morwenna. "That'll make it easier for the horses to kill me!"

"Now you're just being paranoid," said Mina disgustedly and reached into her bag. She pulled out a book and began reading.

Philippe looked at the cover. "_The Lost Continent_? What's that?"

"An excellent fantasy book." Mina reached back into her bag and pulled out another book, which she handed to Philippe. "This is the first in the series."

Philippe looked at the first Discworld book, _The Colour of Magic_, over at Morwenna, whose head was sticking out the window and trying to watch the horses carefully, back at Mina, who was absorbed in her book now, and back down at the book she'd given him. He shrugged and opened it.

Ten minutes later, Morwenna was feeling relatively safe, so she brought her head back inside the carriage. "Whatcha reading?"

"_The Lost Continent_," Mina answered absentmindedly.

"Got _Guards! Guards!_?"

Mina handed her bag over. "I think so."

Morwenna began digging through it as Philippe laughed.

"This Rincewind guy is an idiot!"

"Don't diss Rincewind. He's awesome," said Mina, marking her place in her book and glaring at the elder de Chagny. Morwenna paused in her search and gaped at her niece.

"You gave one of your books to him? To _read_!"

"Sure." Mina shrugged. "It's not like I gave him _The_ _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_."

"You can't do that!"

"Why not? At least these books don't contain any references to the future."

Morwenna just stared. "They sometimes reference Lord of the Rings!"

"Pfft," said Mina dismissively. "Aunt Siren mentions it all the time, and the Authoress is obsessed with Dad's Elvish-like hearing."

Philippe closed the book and handed it back to Mina. "If my reading this is causing some sort of space-time anomaly, then here. I don't want it."

The two magic users stared, and elsewhere, every Philippe phangirl's eyes turned into hearts at his coolness.

"Where was it you ladies are headed?"

"Rouen's Old Folks Home," said Mina, putting the books away. Philippe looked out the window.

"We're in Rouen now."

"Great!" said Morwenna, jumping out of the carriage and being sure to avoid the horses. "I'm starving! Think they've got tacos?"

"Tacos?" asked Philippe, brow furrowed.

"See, Aunt Morwenna?" said Mina. "If you're so worried about messing with the continuum, we shouldn't even be here."

Elsewhere, the PPC shouted their agreement with that statement.

"I'll try to be more careful," said an embarrassed Morwenna.

"Why did you come with us?" Mina asked the Count.

"To get away from the phans," he said, "though it seems you two are just as insane."

Morwenna and Mina grinned, then glanced around.

"Where would the Old Folk's Home be?"

"Call up that map again, Aunt Morwenna."

"Not with a Muggle here!"

"Pfft," said Mina again. "Do you honestly think that that matters? He's a Phantom of the Opera character. They've seen more than enough weirdness. Besides, this pales in comparison to what the managers went through yesterday."

--

And speaking of the managers, they were currently working their way through the ruins of the Opera House as Erik and Company ran up.

"Am I really just one of your 'company'?" asked Nadir, knowing he wasn't going to like the answer.

"Yes!" said Erik with obvious glee at his friend's anger, and looked at the Opera's wreckage. "Whoa . . ."

"Oh, crap," said several of the phans who had come as part of Erik's Company and were happy to be known as so. "This is bad. . ."

"What do you know of this?" demanded Erik of his phans. They quailed under that intense gaze.

"Well, Erik -" this came out sounding a bit higher than the phan would have liked, so she took a deep breath before trying again. "Erik, we were trying to help you out, and -"

"I wouldn't call this helping," he commented dryly.

"We brought in a giant robotic Ayesha!" said another phan, bouncing on her heels and beaming.

"Except it kind of . . . backfired," said another phan, elbowing the one who had previously spoken. She stopped her bouncing and tried her hardest to look guilty. She failed miserably.

"Explain backfired."

"Instead of intimidating the managers into giving back your job . . . the robot went out of control and stomped right through the Opera."

"I see," said Erik in the tone of voice that suggested that he in fact didn't, "and where is this 'robot'?"

"Over there." The phans lowered their heads in shame and pointed to the back of the Opera's wreckage, where Weapon A lay on the ground and licking its metallic paw. As he watched, a phan on that side tossed a giant ball of yarn at it. Weapon A mewed happily and began to play.

Erik muttered something under his breath that only Nadir was able to understand, because he was the only other one present who spoke that language, and carefully began to make his way across the remains of the Opera. When he walked across the general area where the managers' office had been located, he heard an exclamation of anger. Looking puzzled, he bent down (inadvertently giving the phans a fair view of his behind) and lifted a shelf away.

There, Moncharmin and Richard sat in a hole, digging around frantically.

"What are you imbeciles doing?" asked a slightly amused Erik, ignoring the happy cheering that went on behind him.

They paid no attention to the insult. "We're searching for our money!" shouted Richard, who didn't want to let go of any more of it than he had to.

"And my yoyo!" added Moncharmin. "And my safety pins!"

Erik dropped the shelf back to its place, grinning under his mask at the muffled yelps of pain from the managers.

He continued on his trek across the remains and soon came to the other side, where he studied the robot closely. Mecha-Ayesha mewed and stuck out its metallic tongue to lick him.

"Well-constructed," he said to himself, wiping away the Mecha-Ayesha drool. Several phans nearby bowed proudly.

"She can speak over a dozen languages," offered a phan wearing a Jurassic Park cap and holding a clipboard. She struck Erik as seeming quite like a scientist taking tabs on an experiment.

"What else can she do?"

"Everything that the real Ayesha can do, and tons more," said the scientist-phan, motioning to some other phans. They hurried around the back of the mech and disappeared for a moment. When they returned, the scientist-phan pulled a remote out of her pocket and pushed a green button. At once, Mecha-Ayesha leapt up, her eyes glowing.

Then blue beams shot out of her eyes and hit the ground. The phan nudged Erik and pointed towards the area where the beams hit. He looked away from the Ayesha robot's eerie glowing eyes and toward that bit of ground.

Mecha-Ayesha was playing a 3-D hologram of _Monty Python and the Holy Grail._

"Ooooh," said several phans.

"Impressive," Erik allowed. The phans beamed, but didn't take their eyes away from the movie.

"Ooh, watch this, Erik, watch!" they demanded together, pointing to the part where King Arthur comes up to the castle with his servant and the coconuts.

Erik did indeed watch.

"That made no sense. They were arguing about how much weight small birds can carry. What does that have to do with anything?"

"But it's _funny_!" they said. "Just wait 'till we get to the Knights Who Say 'Ni'!"

"No thanks," said Erik dryly and turned around to walk back to his companions. Halfway across the rubble, however, he fell through.

The phans not watching Monty Python screamed, and when the phans who were watching it looked away, they screamed too. They all rushed over to the pit and looked down, the worry clearly apparent on their faces.

"Erik!" they shouted together.

"I'm okay," came his voice, not very far down. The phans let out a collective breath of relief.

"Good!"

Down in the darkness, Erik looked up at their anxious faces. He still found it _really _difficult to believe that all these adolescent girls seemed to genuinely care for him like this.

"We'll have you out soon!" they called, then began conferencing amongst themselves, presumably thinking up a way to get rope quickly.

Erik doubted they'd have him out anytime soon.

In the meantime, he decided to look around and see if there was anything he could use to help himself get out.

-

Once again, the de Chagnys path crossed that of the Opera Ghost. Must be Fate. Or I'm just Evil.

Raoul helped Christine out of his new carriage, and they both looked upon the ruins together.

They gasped together as well.

"Wow . . ." said Raoul, for lack of anything better to say.

"Erik must have blown it up," Christine realized. "Oh, I do hope no one was hurt!"

Together, they made their way carefully across the area to stand next to Meg, Madame Giry, Nadir, and the Siren.

"So what happened here?" Raoul demanded.

"Ayesha blew up the Opera," said Madame Giry.

"Ayesha!" both de Chagnys shouted in a very undignified way.

"Did she somehow turn the grasshopper?" asked Christine.

"Tch, no," said a phan, who was kneeling on the ground and digging through her backpack. "We built a giant _robot _Ayesha and it went haywire."

"What?"

"We couldn't control it," elaborated another phan, digging through her bag as well. "Say, either of you got any rope?"

For the first time, Raoul and Christine saw the gaping hole.

"Did one of you fall through?" asked Raoul, looking worried. "Is she okay?"

The phans snorted.

"More like 'he', Vicomte."

"You don't mean . . ." said Raoul, eyes wide.

"Yup."

Raoul practically launched himself at the hole. "Philippe!"

There was a pause, and the phans laughed.

"Sorry," said one of them. "Didn't mean to panic you like that. Philippe's not here."

"Yeah," said another phan, "he's off gallivanting in Rouen with Mina and Morwenna on a revenge mission. He doesn't think we know, but we do."

The names meant nothing to Raoul, but he was relieved to hear his brother was okay. "Then who?"

"Erik," said the phans solemnly.

"Is he okay?" asked Christine, moving closer to the hole. At once, Raoul hopped to her side protectively. They peered down into the blankness.

"Yes," said the scientist-phan from before. "We were talking to him for awhile and he didn't seem hurt, but he disappeared a few minutes ago. He's probably exploring."

"Good thing, too, since you're here," added another phan. "No offense."

"None taken," Christine said earnestly. "How are you going to get him out?"

"We're looking for rope. No one really wants to leave to get it, though." The phan got a light-bulb above her head. "Hey! Why don't _you _go get us some rope?"

Another phan snatched the light-bulb from the air and stashed it in her backpack. Who knew, it might come in handy.

"We can do that," replied Christine, and turned to her husband. "Let's go, honey."

The E/C phans made gagging sounds, but the few R/C phans present smiled.

"Is this wise?" Raoul asked as they hurried back to their carriage.

"Sure," said Christine. "We'll give them what they want and quickly leave before they have a chance to rescue Erik."

Raoul nodded.

"Besides, it would be wrong to refuse to help him," added Christine thoughtfully.

"I suppose," Raoul reluctantly agreed.


	9. A totally random bit shoved in this

_I would like to thank Raikune for inspiring this chapter by reminding me (in her latest chapter of A Brother's Love) that there is a character in the POTO book named Gabriel and thusly giving me another semi-canonical Remy-is-Gambit idea._

_This is kind of a filler chapter. Meaning, I'm shoving this freshly written chapter between previously written chapters._

_This is a seriously weird chapter, just so you know. Don't like extreme oddness? Don't read._

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

A tall man dressed all in black stood atop the edge of a nearby building's roof, looking down a the remains of the Opera House. No, this wasn't Erik. He adjusted his hat and continued staring down at the wrecked Opera.

"Well, this is unfortunate," he said. Soon, Remy climbed up to the roof and stood behind him, gasping for breath.

"Whew, that was quite a climb, Gabriel," said Remy. "Why did you ask us to meet you here?"

"So that we aren't seen," said Gabriel, fiddling with his coat. Remy looked at Gabriel, then up at the sun, then back at darkly dressed Gabriel, then down at the crowd, who indeed seemed to have spotted him and were pointing up.

"Um," said Remy.

Boba Fett then decided to show up using his jetpacks and causing another stir from the growing crowd. Thankfully, the phans didn't catch wind of this, or there would have been on hugely gigantic glompingfest and God knows what else.

"The Sarlacc is displeased," boomed the great bounty hunter Fett.

"Oh, do shut up about the Sarlacc. Just because it decided to vomit you up right before the digestion began . . ." There was no need to finish that statement. The owner of this sentence was an adorable little man with a wacky hairdo and wearing monk clothing.

"Friar," he immediately corrected, causing the Authoress to squee and temporarily stick herself into the phic in order to glomp him.

"Not this again!" Gabriel grumbled.

"Sorry," said MetaChi, who immediately disappeared. After stealing Gabriel's hat.

"Give that back!" he shouted. "I look silly without it!"

The hat reappeared.

On the friar's head.

"Nice," commented the friar, tilting the hat to the side to make him seem more mysterious. Gabriel angrily snatched his accessory back and replaced it to its rightful place.

"Now," said Gabriel, attempting to seem like the leader. "Report."

"Um," said Remy again, referring again to what was going on below them .

Gabriel looked down.

"Oh, blast," he said. "Fine. We'll reconvene at the Vatican."

"The Vatican is in Italy," said the friar. "I don't think we have time to go down there to just have a meeting and then return."

"Then we'll reconvene at that rundown church I killed Hyde at!" screamed Gabriel, who was getting frustrated. As if you couldn't tell.

"That doesn't happen for another six years, at least," the friar pointed out. Gabriel stomped off to the other side of the roof, gave a fulfilling scream of rage, and stomped back.

"Fine," he said through gritted teeth. "Then let me just kill them."

"You can't do that!" shouted the friar. "First off, the Authoress would be ticked, and two, do you know how much trouble you'd get into back home!"

Gabriel considered throwing himself off the building and seeing what would happen. But then he had to reconsider - after all, what would his fangirls do with themselves? He couldn't just abandon them like that . . .

"Fine," he repeated. "Then what do _you_ suggest we do?"

"Well," said Carl, who was being named for the first time, "we need a good strategy. And maybe a distraction . . ."

—

"I don't like it," Boba Fett objected. "I don't get to kill anybody."

"I agree with the bounty hunter," said Gabriel. "Someone has to die."

"No!" Carl and Remy both shouted.

"You can't do that!" the friar gasped, his morals clearly showing through. Or maybe it was Book!Faramir's influence showing through.

"I won't get paid for this fic if you kill someone off!" said Remy, who didn't have as many moral scruples as Carl. "Especially if it's someone the Authoress likes."

Boba Fett, Gabriel, and Carl turned together to stare at the mutant. Then they asked simultaneously:

"You get paid?"

"Remy is special." Gambit grinned.

The other three began muttering amongst themselves. This was hardly fair - after all, if they remembered right, the Authoress of _this _phic didn't really love Remy. She was much more a fan of Carl, who obviously wasn't getting paid.

"Who says I'm not?" Carl asked, wounded.

"It's obvious," said Gabriel. "You haven't bought one new gadget since we arrived in this weird modern-yet-historical version of Paris."

Carl muttered something that it sounded an awful lot like, "Who got glomped, eh?"

MetaChi stuck her head in via plothole and simply said, "Hey, I have to pay Gambit to have a guest role in this fic. He's Sawyer from Lost, you know." And she withdrew her head, promising to not further curse this phic with self-insertion again.

"And I'm not getting paid, either," said Gabriel, ignoring the blatant self-insertion and wondering why exactly he wasn't getting paid. After all, the Authoress _had _swooned the second he showed up onscreen. And had immediately become enamoured with his hat . . .

What was it with this Authoress and hats?

"Same thing with masks," Nadir said pointedly from the Opera's ruins, earning an odd glance from Madame Giry and the others and referring to a review that the Authoress had left for one of eOG's phics before it got taken down by the the mean people running a certain fanfiction site.

"And eyes," MetaChi added, who just had to pop in one more time to say this. She sighed happily, thinking of Ray Liotta's eyes, and quickly went away before a number of characters tried to kill her for making them be in a stupid phic like this.

"I'm scared," said Boba Fett. He really was, too. These stupid fanfictions were truly more frightening than anything the Galaxy Far Far Away could toss at him.

Gabriel stood up. "Well, I'm thinking —"

"You can think?" Remy mock-gasped, then grinned when Gabriel glared at him.

"— that we should get out of here and make ourselves scarce," he finished, looking around at the others and giving Remy another glare.

"Good idea," said Carl, looking over the side of the building. "There's quite a crowd down there. How are we going to escape, though?"

Boba Fett figured his jet packs couldn't handle carrying four people, Remy's exploding cards wouldn't really help much, and Gabriel's arsenal of weapons didn't really include anything that could help them escape by about five hundred people unnoticed.

They all paused and thoughtfully considered the situation.

None of them noticed the plothole open behind them and the Authoress reaching out to pull them in.

"Yai!" they all screamed when she tapped them on the shoulders.

"Er . . . we didn't panic," they lamely exused themselves. The Authoress rolled her eyes.

"Riiight. Here." She motioned to the plothole. "Use this plothole to travel with. Goddess knows I've got enough of them to go around. Oh, relax, it's perfectly safe."

They all looked skeptically at the hole — would _you _trust the word of a crazy Fangirl Authoress? — and back down at the growing crowd before making up their minds.

They hopped into the plothole, which closed behind them.

And here the chapter ends.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

_Right. You were warned. Now, for some explanation._

_Boba Fett referring to the Sarlacc was somewhat a reference to the hilariously funny fic _The Story of Bobo Fat. _It's in my favorite stories tab. Check it out sometime._

_The whole Sawyer-is-Gambit thing belongs to deathisyourart over at LiveJournal. Genius. Genius, I say. Wonderful argument, and I would so vote for Josh Holloway to be Remy in X-Men 3._

_I want Van Helsing's hat._

_I want Erik's fedora._

_I do so adore Ray Liotta. And his eyes. He was wonderful on ER a couple weeks ago._

_I really think the characters would try to hurt me if they could._

_The plothole thing was swiped from the PPC, just with my own weird twist._

_Yeah . . . I'm either brave or stupid for daring to post this._


	10. I can't think up a title at the moment

_Just a couple of notes here: Mama Valerius is in a wheelchair here so she has means of transportation, and Fred is what I call the guy in Leroux's book who Nadir wanted to avoid when he was leading Raoul down to Erik's place. Not the Ratcatcher, the other guy._

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Madeleine looked up from her knitting at the sound of a very violent 'ahem'. There, standing in the front yard of Rouen's Old Folks Home, were a couple of women and a man. The women were glowering at her, and the man glanced around curiously.

The two women looked as she had when she was younger, and with a jolt she realized who one of them must be. And it would explain their angry looks. But the other one shouldn't be this young . . . not if it was who she thought it was.

They had stared at each other for a few moments when one of Madeleine's friends rolled onto the porch, carrying a basket.

"Yo, Madeleine, wanna go have a picnic? I've got everything we'll need and we can invite that cute guy you've had your eye on lately." Her friend winked at her as she blushed and wished her friend wasn't so forward speaking all the time.

Especially not right now, since a family reunion of sorts was about to take place.

When Madeleine didn't answer, Mama Valerius followed her gaze down to the yard and saw Mina, Morwenna, and Philippe.

Mina waved to her . . . erm, step-grandmother of sorts.

"Why, you're Erik and Christine's little girl, aren't you?" Mama Valerius beamed. "Mina, was it?"

Madeleine's mouth, as well as Mina and Morwenna's, hung open in surprise.

"Wha . . .?" they all said together, though for obviously different reasons that happened to be exactly the same.

Morwenna recovered first, being slightly more used to this sort of thing than Mina.

"How do you know that Erik and Christine got together in a different Universe?" asked Morwenna.

Now Mama Valerius looked slightly startled. "They're not together in this 'verse?" she asked. "That's unusual . . . but you're still their little girl, aren't you?"

Mina nodded. "Just in a different reality," she answered. "Mom is married to Raoul in this one."

"Then why are you here?" Mama Valerius asked.

"Book report," said Mina.

"I'm here to watch her," said Morwenna, "but mostly I'm on vacation."

"Ah," said Mama Valerius, who knew that sort of thing well. "I visit Pern from time to time. Dragon-riding is very soothing for the soul."

"Do you really?" asked Mina, whose eyes suddenly took on that shiny anime-ish look. "I've always wanted to do that!"

"I'll take you with me next time I go!" Mama Valerius's face seemed unable to shed that happy smile.

"Awesome!"

Madeleine finally gathered her senses together. "I . . . have a granddaughter?"

"You've got a couple of grandsons, too," said Mina bluntly. "But one of them we never talk about, since he came about under very . . . bad . . . circumstances and a really crappy book, and the other isn't very popular, due to circumstances as well." She shrugged. "So technically, I've got a couple of brothers if you blend the different versions, but just consider me an only child." She grinned. "Though I've got some rather odd circumstances surrounding me, too, according to Aunt Siren."

Madeleine stared, uncomprehending. And stared some more. When she finally did speak, she sounded quite like a Wookie. She cleared her throat to try again.

"So Erik is alive?"

"He has to be, or I wouldn't be here," said Mina.

"How is he?"

"He's doing really well, no thanks to you," Morwenna butted in. Madeleine turned to look at her aunt and as she did so, felt an odd feeling of apprehension that she couldn't explain.

"Where have you been!" Madeleine demanded of her aunt.

"Trapped in the Bermuda Triangle," said Morwenna, who gestured to herself. "That's why I'm younger than you." She grinned evilly at her niece. "Of course, I'm sure that the me in this Universe is still trapped there, since I'm from her 'verse." She indicated Mina.

Madeleine stared again.

"Would you like to come on our picnic with us?" Mama Valerius suddenly invited.

_No!_ thought Madeleine. _NOOO! You fool!_

The two magical people exchanged looks, glanced back at Philippe, and shrugged.

"Sure," said Mina.

"No thanks," said Morwenna at the same time. Aunt and great-grandniece stared at each other in a brief battle of wills before Mina nodded.

"Sorry, we can't," she amended.

Madeleine let out a quiet breath of relief. _Good._

Mama Valerius looked overly disappointed. "Oh, okay . . . then we'll have to reschedule!" And the smile was back.

"Excuse me," demanded an orderly, suddenly appearing in the center of the scene and glaring around at everyone in general. "What's all this? There are no visitors permitted on the grounds today!"

"Shove off," said Mama Valerius brightly. "They're relatives of Madeleine's."

"And they're here to kick your butt, you know," said another woman, leaning out of the doorway of the Old Folks Home. "I _told _you that you shouldn't have treated little Erik the way you did."

"No, no, no!" cried the orderly, waving his arms around in an overly dramatic way. "There won't be any butt-kicking! Not on _my _watch!"

"Go away!" everyone present except Philippe and Madeleine snapped, including the quickly forming audience.

The orderly glared around at them all.

"Morwenna, what does she mean we're going to kick her butt?" asked Mina. "I thought we weren't going to do that yet. You said we were only going to talk to her!"

"And we are," said Morwenna. "After we maim her."

"You can't maim one of my charges!" piped up the orderly. "All of you, GET OUT!"

"PIPE DOWN!" screamed everyone, including Philippe and Madeleine this time.

The orderly glared.

"What do you mean, they want to kick my butt?" asked a slightly worried Madeleine. After all, she wasn't as young and pretty as she used to be, and therefore couldn't use her Mary Sue-like beauty to charm everyone she came across.

"I mean, _they want to kick your butt_," said Marie Perrault. "And I'll be dead and sent to the deepest circle of hell before I'll help you."

"Does that mean she's a mutineer and betrayer?" a couple of the bystanders quietly wondered.

Mama Valerius looked between the two elderly women. "Why would they want to hurt you, Madeleine?"

Marie answered before Madeleine could even open her mouth. "You see, the distinguished lady here treated her only child lower than a sack of manure, just because he happened to be born the ugliest child on Earth."

She seemed to have had that reply ready for some time and was quite eager to say it.

Mama Valerius' kind face suddenly grew dark and menacing. Madeleine wanted to leave. She wanted to leave right now

"You mean," began Mama Valerius, "that the reason Erik has such an inferiority complex is because of his _mother_! He didn't want a normal wedding because of you!" She began raging a bit. "My Christine was almost denied the lavishness she deserved on the most important day of her life because of _you_! My _daughter_ almost gave up the most important day of her life because of _you!_"

Madeleine shrugged. She suddenly began to feel even more apprehensive, being surrounded by all these vengeful women.

Even the obnoxious orderly just stood there, staring. Philippe backed away cautiously.

"Um . . . ladies?" Philippe managed to say. "It _really _wouldn't be wise of you to resort to violence in this matter. It will only get you into trouble."

"Right!" the orderly piped up again. "I wouldn't want to have to call up the Inspector and have him come arrest you. He's not easy to deal with."

"He's right. Don't want to have to deal with the police. Especially not _that _policeman. It'd be difficult to explain how we're here," Mina said suddenly, not wanting another run-in with Inspector Javert. Last time that happened . . . she didn't finish the thought. "Besides, I don't want to be responsible for accidentally killing Grandma. C'mon!" She took off across the yard, heading towards Philippe's carriage.

After a final withering glare, Morwenna reluctantly followed her niece. Philippe trailed behind. Madeleine sighed.

"Damn," said Marie. "I was hoping this would be Judgement Day for you, Madeleine. Oh well, maybe tomorrow." She went back inside, followed by Mama Valerius who had some questions to ask.

The orderly wandered away to sniff out any more trouble and Madeleine picked up her half-done sock to study. If she made a few slight adjustments, it could be altered to fit a grown man's foot . . .

She got to work.

— — — —

Erik looked around the room he'd stumbled into. Normally he knew the Opera like the back of his hand, but because Mecha-Ayesha crushed it, rooms weren't where they were supposed to be.

He'd never admit it, but he was lost.

Lost, in his own Opera! He laughed at that. And then, because it felt good, laughed again.

"Would you shut up already?" snapped a foreign voice, a voice that sounded like it desperately wanted to get back to sleep. "Jeez, a guy needs a simple rest and then some fool has to come along to interrupt it by laughing like a maniac!" There was a sound like someone rolling over and then silence.

Erik walked towards the voice. "Fred? Is that you?"

"I thought you would have – Erik!" The form of a humanoid person leapt up and rubbed his eyes. He moved forward a bit and used the bit of light that came through to see Erik's dark form, somehow recognizing him. "Erik! What are you doing here? I thought you were fired!"

"I am," he replied sadly. "But that doesn't really matter now."

Fred tilted his head in a quizzical way. "What do you mean?"

Erik made some vague gestures with his hands. "My phans blew up the Opera. I'm surprised you're alive, really."

Fred said something that's not fit to print. "I knew those phans of yours would do something stupid one day."

"They were doing what they thought best," replied Erik, who was shocked at this sudden feeling of defensiveness for his phans.

"Even so," retorted Fred, beginning to look around. "How bad is the damage?"

"The place is shattered."

"How'd they do it?" asked Fred, who had a strange fondness for explosives.

"Built a giant metallic Ayesha. It went out of control and stomped right through the Opera. That's why I'm surprised you're alive."

Fred looked proud. "It's gonna take more than one little robot to get rid of me!"

"You haven't seen the size of the thing," Erik pointed out. "Would you happen to have any rope down here?"

Fred looked thoughtful. "Maybe. Look over there." He pointed to what looked like a footlocker sitting in an angled position in a corner as he began looking through the random objects he'd been sleeping on.

Erik cautiously opened the locker, not knowing what in the world might be inside.

His cautiousness paid off, for no less than three rats, a Gremlin, Experiment 395 from Lilo and Stitch, a snake, and twelve Muppets looked up from their card game, jumped out of the box in a hurry, and took off.

"Oh, nice," complained Fred. "You let out my collection!"

Erik turned around. "You were collecting Muppets!"

"They were ones Jim Henson didn't want." Fred shrugged innocently. "I offered them a home."

"We didn't know you were planning on collecting us and keeping us locked up in the Luggage!" shouted what could only have been a Muppet voice from far off.

Fred shrugged innocently again. Erik rolled his eyes and turned back to the footlocker.

And fell to his butt in shock.

_That box had teeth!_

"What is that!" asked Erik, scuttling back a safe distance. After all, he couldn't Punjab a box. At least, he didn't think he could . . .

"I was wondering when the Luggage would make itself known," said Fred, walking over to it and patting the wood fondly. The teeth disappeared and the box gave off the distinct feeling of happiness.

It suddenly sprouted about a hundred little legs and scurried off into the darkness.

"Don't go too far!" Fred called after it.

"What is that thing!"

"The Luggage," said Fred. "Well, not _the _Luggage. More like _a _Luggage. If it were _the _Luggage, I'd have the PPC hot on my trail to get it back. Not that I blame them, of course, because that would just be wrong anyway. Nah. I went to Discworld and got some of my own sapient pearwood to fashion my own Luggage. It was easy." He stared off in the direction his Luggage had gone. "I think I did a rather good job, honestly."

None of this made sense to Erik and he had the feeling he was in the dark again, both literally and hypothetically speaking. Either that, or Fred was rambling nonsensically again. He wasn't sure which.

So he remained silent, which for Erik was perfectly normal.

Fred looked back at Erik, as if suddenly realizing something. "What are you doing down here?"

"Fell down a hole."

Fred looked up. "Wow, you're lucky you weren't hurt. You must have the reflexes of a cat."

"That's not entirely true," Erik pointed out. "Ayesha doesn't always land on her feet."

"How is she doing, anyway?" asked Fred, going back to digging though a pile of junque™(1).

"Okay," said Erik and, realizing a deeper implication, added, "I hope she doesn't think I've been neglecting her. We've just been busy over the past few days."

"Like playing paintball and not inviting me," muttered Fred, pulling a long rope out from underneath a buried chair.

Erik immediately felt a teensy bit guilty. "I'm sorry, Fred. I didn't know you'd be interested in that game."

"The Siren knew," he snapped. "She promised me she'd invite me next time she went."

Erik made some vague gestures of uncertainty. "Sorry," he repeated. Fred tossed him the rope.

"Take that while I pack," he said.

Erik tested the rope. It seemed strong enough. But not as strong as his Lasso, of course.

His Lasso!

He pulled that out from under his cloak and stared at it. Why hadn't he remembered that he had it before?

He compared it to the rope and was relieved that his Lasso was the shorter of the two. At least then he hadn't quite been stuck down here for nothing.

Fred finished loading things into his suitcase and snapped it shut. "I'm ready to go," he said. "But we've gotta find my Luggage first."

Erik shrugged and tucked both ropes into his cloak. "Where are you going to go?"

"To a local hotel," he replied, "until I get a way to get my stuff out of here. Then I think I'll go to Canada."

"Canada?"

"Always wanted to see Niagara Falls."

"Ah."

"Do you remember the way back from where you came?"

"Yes," said Erik confidently, hoping he was right. After all, there were hallways where there hadn't been hallways before . . .

Fred took off down a side tunnel.

"Where are you going!" Erik yelled after him.

"I heard my Luggage!" he called. "I'll be right back!"

Erik stared into the darkness for a second, yellow eyes glinting, before turning and walking in the direction from where he was sure he'd come. Let Fred find his own way if he was going to chase after a freaky box with legs.

Besides, he had the rope.

— — — —

Christine and Raoul soon returned with the requested item and quickly left again after handing it over to the phans.

The phans tossed the rope down and began calling for Erik.

"Maybe one of us should go down there and search," a phan suggested.

"No way!" said a number of other phans. "What if we got lost down there?"

"Anyone got a good sense of direction?" asked the first phan. Everyone else shook their heads.

"Then anyone got anything to use as a trail?"

"I've got some trail mix," offered Nadir, showing the bag to them. The phans laughed.

"I wouldn't have imagined Nadir eating trail mix!" giggled a phan.

"Me neither!" came the nearly unanimous agreement.

Nadir put the mix away and looked insulted. The Girys patted their pockets.

"I've got M&Ms," offered Meg.

"How many?" asked a phan, trying not to sound too eager at the sound of chocolate.

Meg held up an unopened large bag of peanut butter M&Ms. The phans drooled appreciatively.

"Hey, you can't have them if you're going to eat them," she warned.

As one, the phans shook their heads. "No, M&Ms are too holy to simply be used as a trail, even if it means rescuing Erik sooner."

They turned back to the hole and began their calling afresh as Meg put her M&Ms back in her purse.

She was secretly relieved that the phans had rejected her candy, but she would have felt guilty not offering it as well.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

(1) Junque™ (junk) **_n. _**1. A fancy word for junk that my Mom and I came up with. 2. Used to mean those things that you want to keep, but have absolutely nowhere to put them. 3. Can also mean all of your stuff, including your computer, bed, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, Van Helsing doll, books, Syndrome plushie, CDs, chainsaw, etc.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —


	11. A weird trip, rescues, and an elephant

A lot of this chapter no longer makes much sense, due to the fact that I took down the fic this chapter repeatedly mentions due to stupidity. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to change it, so I'll just leave it. For now.

Erik continued back the way he'd come, or at least the way he thought he'd come, when a very _Rose Red_-ish thing happened. He turned down a tunnel, only it wasn't a dark, ruined tunnel anymore. It was a full-blown fancy hallway, like the kind you'd see in a Marriott hotel. Or the Opera, before Mecha Ayesha crushed it. Curiosity getting the better of him, he turned down the hall, making a note of the direction from which he'd come.

Unfortunately, this particular hallway was home to one of MetaChi's rampant plotholes, which he fell into. Very resentfully, I might add.

Ten seconds later, he found himself standing on a horribly sunny beach, staring down at the Authoress herself, who wiggled her fingers at him in greeting.

"Sit down," she offered, gesturing to an empty beach chair that sat between herself and a man Erik didn't recognize. "Faramir, Steward of Gondor," she conveniently introduced. Faramir nodded at Erik, then went back to what he was doing, which was attempting to play _Super Mario 3 _on his GBA.

Erik sat.

He picked up the root beer that appeared suddenly at his side and sipped it. The drink, I mean.

"Go to New York when you get the chance," MetaChi said blandly, sipping her drink and continuing what she was doing, which was reading _The Well of Lost Plots. _

"New York?" asked Erik. "The Siren's already mentioned that . . ."

"Yup," replied MetaChi, jabbing a finger at the sentence she was on to remember it. She looked over at him, and began to babble. "The Siren knows the full storyline, 'cuz she's the Siren, and Mina and Morwenna — Mina's your kid from a different reality and Morwenna's your unknown aunt — are here to kinda supervise the thing, though they're currently scaring the poop out of Madeleine, and Mina's going under the guise of having to do a book report, which is funny because her chosen book is _Phantom of the Opera._ Whatever teacher teaches English, or rather, French, at Hogwarts is vastly amused by that, since the teachers are all phans of yours. Though I have to be careful she doesn't turn into a 'Sue, since she's already got 'Sue-ish qualities - just being your and Christine's kid is a big no-no. I didn't even want the two of them here anyway - why do they have to be so darn . . . is impertinent the right word?" And she went back to her book without waiting for an answer.

It took Erik a few minutes to process this information and get it in a format he could understand. When he did, he gasped.

"What do you mean Christine and I have a child!"

"Hold on," said MetaChi, "I have to talk to the friar." She proceeded to seemingly talk to thin air, staring out at the ocean as she did so. Erik's reaction was to automatically figure her for being a bigger crazy person than he was. He looked over at Faramir, who didn't seem the least bit disturbed by the fact that his companion was blabbing about Muses and pairings and something called _Les Miserables_.

Erik considered punjabbing them both, but something told him that might not be such a good idea. Something he for some reason labeled _Mystical Authoress Powers _and _Rabid Faramir Fangirls._ He didn't quite know what to make of the labels that just popped into his head.

"What a weird place this is," he said aloud.

"Wait until you see her Fortress," Faramir replied, adding "Die, Bowser, die," under his breath. Apparently he'd gotten hooked on the game.

"Fortress?" he asked, as the Authoress neared the end of her discussion with whoever she was talking to.

"Yes," Faramir affirmed. "She's planning on writing a series of stupid fanfics about her so-called place of residence, entirely in her head I might add, which is a giant Fortress of DOOM!" He blinked. "Except without the 'doom' part. I don't know why I said that."

"'Cuz 'doom' sounds cool," MetaChi answered, opening her book again, just as Gabriel Van Helsing rounded the bend in the beach and glared down at her. "Hi!" she greeted, then picked up her drink for a sip.

"Give me my hat," he growled. Only then did Erik notice that the girl was wearing a hat not unlike his own fedora.

"What do you mean, Christine and I have a child?" Erik demanded again, figuring that it couldn't hurt to ask once more. Not that he cared if it did.

The Authoress grinned at Van Helsing, pulled the hat down around her ears, and turned to Erik, where she proceeded to explain her own fanficcy/wistful Universe-thingy and Mina's role in it, though she wasn't that happy about that particular bit.

"I've tried poisoning her, knocking her out and throwing her into the ocean, knocking her out and giving her to Minas Tireth to eat (except he won't eat her, I don't know why, she's practically a 'Sue), taking a chainsaw to her head when she's sleeping, handed her over to Voldemort for -"

At this, several wizards/witches who just happened to be within hearing range gasped at the non-fear-y tone the Authoress used in speaking He-Who-Can't-Be-Named's name.

"- practicing the crucio curse on, and making her watch a _Butt Ugly Martians_ marathon, and then _Barney_, and then _Scary Movie. _When that actually failed, I put on a CD of Vogon poetry and ran out of the room before it could start up," MetaChi finished, ignoring the collective gasp of fear. "She simply won't go away."

"And I'm what you call a . . . Muse?" Erik asked, wisely deciding that perhaps the subject of the Authoress doing her best to murder his somehow existing daughter was best left alone, especially if the girl was still alive.

"Yup. You're in my top five favorite character list of all time. So's Faramir," she added, jerking a thumb towards him. Faramir waved without looking up from the game.

"Is it a job?" asked Erik, since he rather in need of one.

"Yup. Er, well, kinda. See, you're not exactly _my _Erik, you're one I'm using for my fics. _My _Erik is a bit more . . . how do I explain it? Different personalities, see."

"I don't understand," said Erik, who hated to admit that.

"See?" the woman cried, pointing to a spot in the sky above the tranquil ocean, where the narration was being printed. "That right there! You didn't want to admit you didn't understand! _My_ Erik probably wouldn't have admitted that, whether or not he hated to."

"But if you're using me for this 'fanfic' of yours, aren't I . . . 'your' Erik?" he asked awkwardly.

"Sorta. It's all very confusing. Can we get back to it being a job?"

"What?"

"Well, this chapter needs to coincide with another chapter in a different fic of mine. So Erik, I'm gonna send you back to the Opera and bring in _my _Erik for this, since it wouldn't really make a lot of sense with you sitting here. No offense."

Erik was silent and thought, _Why does she always italicize 'my'? Trying to prove some point, maybe? Or is this other version of me and she . . . _his eyes widened in shock. _Eww._

"Anyway," she continued, unaware of his disgust at such a thought concerning her, "I really only brought you here to enforce the New York thing because I was sure the story was going to spin out of my control, due to your reaction when the Siren mentioned it." She conjured up a watch and looked at it. "Carl and Velkan are gonna turn the corner any second and there needs to be an Erik sitting here. Bye, Erik!" She waved at him again, then snapped her fingers.

Erik found himself standing in the wrecked Opera. He sighed in relief, then looked around.

"Stupid Authoress," he said loudly, trying to figure out how far he was from where he'd been before he fell into the plothole.

—

"There's _got _to be something we can do to find him," said Phan 88 worriedly.

"But it's too risky to go down there," another phan said, thinking sensibly. "But I agree - there has to be something."

"Yo!" said a voice from the hole.

"ERIK!" all the phans cried together, leaning forward to peer into the darkness, not seeming to realize that Erik would never allow the word 'yo' to come from his mouth.

—

"That helps," said Erik to himself, using the sound to try and judge the distance between him and his phans. He used some very complicated algebra or geometry-type math and how high he thought they'd sound yelling together to figure that he was about halfway back from where'd he'd been before he fell into the plothole.

He's so smart.

He began to make his way that way, suddenly glad that all the time he spent in the dark allowed him to see the stray pieces of wood that got in his way.

—

"Wow, he wasn't lying when he said there were a lot of you," Fred said once he was free from the Opera. He looked around at the phans. "Say, any of you got any of those yummy blackberry candies?"

"Yeah," said the scientist-phan with the Jurassic Park cap. She dug around her backpack and came up with a small pack, which she handed to Fred. "So you're friends with Erik?"

"Yeah. Me and Erik play chess on Fridays." He opened the bag and began to eat the candy eagerly.

"I should have known you and Erik were friends," said Nadir crossly, feeling a bit upset at the somewhat OC.

"What's the matter?" Fred asked. "Mad 'cuz I wouldn't let you wander the cellars, trying to find out what he was up to? Erik said you were poking your nose where it didn't belong."

"I think his kidnapping Christine proved that I was right," he retorted.

"Pft," said Fred, munching on some more candy. "We all know Christine didn't mind it that much."

The E/C phans' wild cheering answered that statement.

Nadir didn't get a chance to reply, because at that moment Erik found his way back and called out, "Are you all still up there?"

The crowding of the phans, the Siren, Madame Giry, Meg, Nadir, and Fred around the hole and blocking out the sunlight was answer enough.

"You're okay!" the phans cried happily, throwing the long rope down. In seconds, Erik was out, looking around at everyone. Then he pointed at Mecha Ayesha.

"Get that thing out of here," he ordered. The phans saluted and went to do as he asked. He looked at everyone else.

"I've got to check on the real Ayesha. She's probably thinking I abandoned her." He managed to look pained through his mask at such a thought.

His posse nodded and began to follow him to his apartment, the phans trailing behind. Fred waved at them all and said he'd be glad to have them visit if they ever went to Canada, then he turned and walked in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, he wasn't heading in the right direction.

He was on his way to Russia.

—

Boba Fett, having left Gabriel, Carl, and Remy behind a while back, resumed his hunt for his quarry. Unfortunately, the journey was plagued by several mishaps, none of which were his own fault.

After all, it couldn't really be his fault that there was an elephant with several cats taped to it following him around and complaining about Dominic Monaghan, right?

Or that a giant yellow ship had shown up and someone inside said they were going to demolish the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass and he and the elephant had somehow gotten inside, whereupon the Vogons had realized their mistake of coming to the wrong era and had quickly sped back to the future so that the Dentrassi could help Ford and Arthur out, accidentally taking Boba (and the elephant with the cat problem) with them. God, that was a long sentence.

It had been pretty difficult for the Vogons to return him and the elephant, then get back to the future in time.

Boba was still twitching from the poetry. The elephant had rather cheefully informed the bounty hunter that he'd enjoyed it. And he was dead serious about that, unlike Arthur.

Then he'd somehow gotten sucked into a tiny plothole which had dumped him and the elephant into an abbey (which the elephant nearly crushed), where they'd had to accompany a certain mouse out into the woods in order to find their way back.

And then Stitch had popped up cheerfully, asking directions on how to get to the Authoress's SOAP Opera phic.

There had been quite a lot of confusion in determining its location, as it had resided at many homes since it had been evicted so cruelly from ffn.

After Stitch finally left, Boba Fett was positive his very weird troubles were over, and sat down on a park bench to rest.

Christine and Raoul walked by at that very second, giving Boba and his armor a weird look, then hurrying away as fast as they could when they saw Boba's cat-plagued elephant friend sitting nearby.

Boba stood up, demanded that the elephant leave him alone, and stealthily went after his quarry.

The elephant looked sad for a moment, then perked up when Valjean and Cosette strolled by, being stalked by Marius.

He stood up, and lumbered after Valjean, hoping to make a new friend.

The cats yowled angrily.


	12. Back to Erik's apartment

Erik opened the door to his apartment forcefully, causing the door to bounce back on its hinges.

"Ayesha!" he called. Almost at once, the demon cat bounded out of one of the bedrooms and leapt up towards Erik. He caught her easily, and began petting her and cooing.

The Siren, who'd seen this kind of behavior before, wasn't surprised by it, but the others were.

Madame Giry and Meg stared, wide-eyed, and Nadir began to giggle like a teenage girl.

Erik continued holding his precious kitty and turned around to face the door. "What?" he accused, eyes glinting, though the others couldn't see that as it wasn't dark in the room.

They shook their heads, not wanting to wind up on the wrong end of his Punjab.

"Can I make cake?" the Siren suddenly pleaded, somewhat referring to a deleted scene in this phic that I may or may not add in as a deleted scene at the end of this phic.

"Go ahead," Erik invited, elicting a cheerful squeal from the half-mermaid creature, who dashed off to the kitchen and began getting started.

She came back out approximately ten minutes later, holding a bowl of batter which she was still beating.

"I just read this side-splitting hilarious phic by one of MetaChi's fellow Authoresses," she began, "and I'm not making cake after all."

"Then what are you going to make?" asked Erik, who was now sitting in a recliner holding Ayesha and looking remarkably like a mob boss.

Ayesha purred, then turned her head to glare at the Siren. Oh, how she hated the fish creature. How she wanted to transform into a jaguar and bite into her jugular vein. How she wanted to -

"Muffins!" she shouted, holding the batter bowl above her head in what was meant to be a dramatic gesture.

Ayesha liked muffins and decided that perhaps the Siren wasn't so bad after all.

In an action that everyone would later swear happened in slow-motion, the Siren lost her balance, tipped over, and spilled batter all over Nadir's new suit.

Going back to regular-motion, Nadir leapt up, shouting all kinds of curses at the Siren, most of which were in Persian, and stalked out of the apartment angrily, having taken what was obviously the last straw in his abuse by the fanfic writers.

Ayesha went back to hating the Siren with the fire of a thousand suns, which would equate to the Authoress's hatred of Helen and Aphrodite from Greek mythology. Or perhaps the first two _Scary Movie _movies. The third wasn't that bad, after all. Or maybe her hatred of _SpongeBob Squarepants_, or _Butt Ugly Martians, _or the map from _Dora the Explorer_. God, I despise that map more than I can say.

"Shut up!" Ayesha shouted, not appreciating this intrusion and attention-stealing-away from her hate-fest of the Siren.

"Sorry," the Authoress replied.

Ayesha went back to contemplating her hatred for Erik's stupid right-hand woman, and after a sentence the Siren began to say, but did not finish, she was up and running out the door, chasing after the Persian.

"That was weird," Madame Giry commented.

"Get used to it," said Erik, scratching behind Ayesha's ears and calling on his Spooky Phantom Powers. "The Authoress originally had a scene with the Siren being afraid of becoming a Mary Sue and feeling guilty for dumping batter on Nadir, but decided that it was a bit too out of character for the Siren and wouldn't fit into this, so she deleted it and wrote this instead." He snorted contemptously. "I'm already way out of character, so I don't know what she's worried about."

Madame Giry and Meg stared blankly. Erik sighed and looked down at Ayesha.

"You know what I'm talking about, don't you?" he asked the cat. Ayesha mewed her understanding and rubbed her head on his arm.

"Well," said Madame Giry suddenly, "I suppose we'd better get going. I need to get started on looking for a new job."

She stood up and motioned for Meg to do the same. After waving and saying their 'see you laters', they walked out.

Erik sighed again.

"I wonder what New York is like," he murmured to himself, wondering why on Earth the Authoress was so insistent that he and the Siren go there.

Eventually, especially when the Siren hadn't yet returned, Erik set Ayesha on the floor and stood up to stretch.

Ayesha mewed pitifully, wondering what her Master was doing.

Erik picked up the batter bowl and walked into the kitchen. Ayesha followed curiously, wondering what he was up to. He began rinsing out the bowl and cleaning up a bit. Ayesha was disappointed that he apparently wasn't going to continue making the fluffy goodness.

The Siren returned a few minutes later, proclaiming that she was now responsible for Nadir's dry-cleaning, and got back on the task of making muffins.

And then, for absolutely no reason at all, MetaChi strolled through the phic, followed by some of her newest headvoices.

"And over here we have my darling Erik, who's very confused by what's going on. Over there is the Siren, who's an annoying fancharacter, and half the city away are two more even more annoying fancharacters' who have invaded my mind, along with the adorable Philippe de Chagny."

Erik stared in said confusion as the Authoress, who was wearing his fedora, turned around.

"Any questions?" she asked the group. A gloved hand near the back shot up.

"Yes, Syndrome?"

"Erik's the one I'm going to have to share the lab with, right?"

"Yup, and not just him. You'll be sharing it with quite a few others." She began counting on her fingers and soon had to stop. "Erm . . . really quite a few, actually. I have a thing for really smart guys."

The red-haired psycho stared. "Can't I just go back to Nomanisan?"

"'Fraid not, Syndrome." She made a disgusted face that also held some anger. "You died, remember?"

"I what!"

"You heard me." She waved at the other members of her group. "Any more questions?"

"Yeah," said a male voice that belonged to a young boy with dark hair and glasses from the front of the group. "Why are you so obsessed with crossovers and referencing your other fanfics and things?"

"Because, Eriol, it's fun. And I can get away with it. And my reviewers don't seem to mind." She grinned devilishly. "Any other questions?"

"I have one," said someone else, and the group parted to reveal who it was.

"Yes, Sayid?" asked the Authoress, who began to drool a bit.

"Your Fortress is large enough for several labs. Why must we all share it?"

"It's a fangirl thing, keeping you all in one place," she answered, grinning again. "Anything else?"

"I have one," said a tall snappily dressed man who radiated evil, who was standing off to the side of the group.

"Yes?" the Authoress asked, looking at her nifty digital watch. This part of the tour of her brain was taking longer than usual, for some reason.

"Why did you kidnap us all in the first place?"

"Because," and that grin returned, "I like you all. You're fun to have around and write fanfics for. Hence all of this." She gestured around.

"Ah," said Emperor Zhark. "I think you have quite an evil mind."

"Thanks!" she beamed. "C'mon, people, I've still gotta show you my Van Helsing fic."

As they walked away, one of the others asked her if she had a library.

"Yes, of course I do, Combeferre." A second passed as they got further and further away, and then the Authoress said, "Of course I've got _Thursday Next._"

Erik blinked, then walked out of the kitchen to watch all of them seemingly disappear into the wall. _What on Earth was that? _he wondered, thinking this infinitely more weird than anything else he'd seen.

Unfortunately for Erik, things were about to get infinitely weirder.


	13. Finally, they get moving again!

OMG I'M BACK. PH342.

**xxxxxxxxx**

For the past year and a half, Erik, the Siren, Ayesha, Nadir, Darius, Madame Giry, Meg, Raoul, Philippe, Christine, Fred, Moncharmin, Richard, the phans, Mina, and Morwenna had been waiting around inside this phic, waiting for it to start back up.

They waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

And waited so long they finally got sick of it and decided to mutiny.

So the next time the Authoress wandered by on her way to write something else, they nabbed her. It was fairly easy, since she wasn't expecting it and they were a large group of people plus the Siren and Mina and Morwenna, the latter being magical and the former being supernatural. Granted, the Authoress claimed a lot of powers for herself, but she was surprised with an ambush. What could she be expected to do?

"Gotcha!" they'd cried, surrounding her with rope and handkerchiefs, ready to tie her up.

". . ." she'd said. "Oh great. I'm like Cap'n Jack. And that means you --" she pointed at Erik "-- are like Barbossa. Except you'd be more fitted to be Davy Jones. And you two --" she pointed to Mina and Morwenna "-- are Ragetti and Pintel and you --" she pointed at Moncharmin and Richard "-- are Murtogg and Mullroy. And Philippe's Norrington. And Raoul is Will, and Christine is . . . kinda like Elizabeth." She looked proud of herself for coming up with the comparisons all by herself, 'til she remembered that she was in danger and flailed madly, trying to escape. But she couldn't.

Now the Authoress was bound and gagged and sat in a corner of the apartment, looking just little bit apprehensive as she watched the characters explore their newfound freedom. That being said, Raoul, Christine, Philippe, Fred, Moncharmin, Richard, and the phans left to go back to their lives. The phans had to practically be forced out by the sight of Madame Giry swinging her cane in their general direction. Mina and Morwenna opted to stay, to fulfill their purpose; the purpose they'd used to persuade the Authoress into letting them stay in the phic.

"What now?" Nadir asked.

"Well," said Erik, glaring down at the Authoress. She squeaked in reply. "I suppose the thing to do now is to continue on with the plotline, whatever that was."

"New York!" the Siren, Mina, and Morwenna immediately chimed together.

"Yes, that." Erik glanced at Morwenna. "I can't get over how much you look like my mother."

"Not my fault, hon," said Morwenna, shrugging. "I'm not all that pleased with the fact either."

"I've got first class tickets," Mina piped up, "if that's what you're going to do, Dad."

"Stop," Erik demanded. "_Stop_ calling me _that._ I _don't_ have a child."

"You stop using italics," Mina retorted. "And no. You are my dad. Even if you're . . . not."

"That makes no sense."

"It makes plenty of sense. You just haven't got the right sort of logic for it." Mina shrugged and changed the subject. "Are you going to do it or not?"

Erik looked back at the Authoress, who'd been trying to wiggle her way over to one of the Siren's nail-files, but had stopped the instant Erik had turned his head. He narrowed his eyes at her and she gulped nervously, even if she couldn't actually _see _his eyes narrow menacingly.

"Why?" he asked. "Why are all of you so insistent that I travel there?"

Mina, Morwenna, and the Siren looked away and muttered various incomprehensible things that no one could understand. The Authoress, being unable to talk, tried to shrug carelessly, but wound up hurting her wrists.

"Well," said Erik, sounding considerably less dark than a moment ago, "since we have the tickets - since we have tickets for _first class_, we may as well go. It isn't as if there's anything else here for me anyway."

Mina, Morwenna, and the Siren cheered. But then the Siren stopped.

"Wait," said the Siren. "We're actually going to go?"

"I see no reason not to," said Erik truthfully.

"Then," said the Siren, "we've gotta sight see Paris one last time before we leave!"

"What."

"I think that sounds like a splendid idea," Nadir put in, then shrugged when Erik glared at him. "Or," he amended, "we can visit the ruins of the Opera one last time."

"Yeah!" said the Siren. "C'mon, Erik!"

Erik groaned. "Fine."

Everyone cheered.

xxxxx

At the ruined remains of the Opera, everyone held a moment of silence for the dearly departed building. Unfortunately, their moment was ruined when a plot device struck in the form of a string of carriages pulling up to the site and a few heavily muscled men immediately went about setting up a stage. When the stage was done and chairs set up, the men disappeared (to the disappointment of Morwenna, the Siren, Madame Giry, and Meg) and a few more carriages pulled up, whereupon people started running for the chairs. Finally, Richard and Moncharmin appeared and went up onto the stage. By this time, there was a very large crowd growing behind Erik and Company and getting larger by the second.

"Is this thing on?" Richard pounded the microphone, causing some horrible feedback, which in turn caused everyone to cover their ears. "Er, sorry about that. Welcome to The One, the Only, Annual Fundraiser for Building Us a New Opera. AKA, the Opera Sing-Out!"

"The what?" Erik asked. Everyone else shrugged.

"Starting off the fund-raiser today is the one, the only, Christine Daae!" Moncharmin shouted, still wearing a baseball cap, chewing gum, and playing with a yo-yo. Only, he had the gum sitting in a gum wrapper so that he didn't choke on it while shouting the introduction for Christine. Soon as he was done, though, the gum went back in.

Christine appeared from around the corner of the stage, Boba Fett standing just behind her so she didn't attempt another escape. She looked nervous and seemed to be searching for Raoul somewhere in the crowd. The crowd cheered madly for her. Raoul waved from where he was standing near the stage, as far from Boba Fett as he could get without abandoning Christine.

Nadir, Madame Giry, Meg, the Siren, Mina, and Morwenna looked at Erik carefully to see his reaction.

"I think," said Erik carefully, sounding a bit pained, "that it would be best if we left."

"Definitely," his posse quickly agreed, and herded him out of there. They kept going until they found a few taxi-carriages, paid for them, and took off to the coast to board their ship for the cruise. When they got there a long while later, though, Erik found himself wondering something.

"What of my possessions?" he wondered. "Did we just leave my stuff back there?"

"No," Madame Giry said by way of explanation. She stood silently, as if contemplating something.

"And?" said Erik a moment later when it was clear she wasn't going to continue of her own volition.

"And Meg and I took the liberty of having it shipped here."

"Oh," said Erik. "Very well."

Mina and Morwenna took off toward the ship, handing their tickets over to the ticket guy and disappearing into the bowels of the ship, hopefully for good. But probably not, unfortunately. The rest of them stared at the ship for a good five minutes before Nadir moved to head over to the sign posted next to the ramp. After glancing it over very quickly, he looked back at them and beamed. It was a bit of a scary sight.

"They've got shuffleboard!" he said eagerly, practically hopping up and down in his excitement. Erik had the feeling that if he were roped into playing that game, it'd be another paintball incident aaaaall over again. He didn't like that feeling.

"Well," Nadir called when he saw that no one else was moving. "Are you coming?"

"Might as well," said Meg, stepping forward to make her way to the ship. Mme Giry automatically followed. Erik still seemed reluctant to go to the ship and jumped slightly when he felt a pressure on his arm. He looked over to see the Siren hanging onto it, beaming like usual.

"Isn't it _grand_, Erik?" she asked. "It's so fancy!"

"Not particularly," Erik muttered. But either the Siren didn't hear which was pretty much impossible, or she didn't care which was slightly more likely but not much since she cared about everyone's feelings. She dragged Erik toward the ship, ignoring his pleas for her to let go.

"ARGH. Sire-- OW. _Oh God my foot._ Siren! _GAH_ _OWW_WWW _Siren!_ Let _go_, plea -- whoa, that almost took my _arm off!_ _Siren let me go NOW!_"

When she didn't, he threatened to kill her and leave her for Freddy Krueger to find, who would then leave it for the Candyman, who would then leave the remains for a vampire to bottle up some highly prized siren blood. The blood of a siren, even one with as questionable a heritage as our Siren had, was equal to . . . I dunno. A _really_ expensive good tasting rare wine. I don't drink alcohol so I wouldn't know.

The Siren had reached the ship by that point and so let Erik go just as he was going into incredible detail about just how said vampire would process her blood to make it even more valuable. Once he realized he was free, he pulled himself to his feet and dusted his ill-fitting suit off.

"Never," he hissed, "_do that to Erik again_."

"Sorry," said the Siren. " But you -- Oooh!" she blurted suddenly, as she stared up the ramp. "Is that -- could it really -- it _is_!" And up the ramp she ran, calling out to a little boy of about thirteen who stood on the deck, looking around curiously.

Erik looked at Nadir. Nadir looked back. Erik stared. Nadir shrugged.

"After you?" Nadir invited. Erik sighed and stepped up to the ramp.

"Why am I doing this?" he wondered to himself yet again.

"Plastics," Nadir immediately replied, then looked confused as to why he had said that as Erik groaned.

"Enough with that stupid joke," he grumbled. As Nadir was about to ask why Erik had said what he had just said was a joke, a man pushed his way between them, headed up the ramp, carrying some luggage. He also had a a trunk that had wheels. Or so it seemed.

Upon slightly closer examination, Erik started. "Fred?"

The man turned around. "Erik!" he said, smiling. "I didn't see you!"

"I see you found your walking suitcase." He pointed to it.

"Yeah," Fred laughed. "It came back after I started waving some raw bacon around. Of course, it also attracted this little guy." He pointed behind his Luggage to a small black creature who waved happily up at them. Nadir screamed bloody murder and threw himself behind the sign he'd been reading so happily. Erik gave him a look.

"You're afraid of _that_? It's so small. It can't harm you."

"When you've been forced into a fitness class with a much bigger version of that _thing_, it will be frightening to you too."

Behind the mask, Erik raised an eyebrow. "Really, Daroga, you can't be serious."

"Damn right I am," Nadir muttered, keeping the sign between himself and the mini-Balrog as it boarded the ramp. Minas Tireth looked curiously at Nadir as it ventured past where he was standing and it waved at him cheerfully. Nadir squeaked fearfully.

Erik looked around for the Authoress, who must've escaped her bonds, to tell her to stop making himself and Nadir so out of character. While he went off on his search, Nadir shouted up to Fred.

"You keep that thing locked in your cabin while we're at sea!"

"Only if you make the Siren pay up the six hundred francs she owes me!"

Nadir paused. "Well, crap."

"I'll pay you back someday, I promise," the Siren told him during a pause in her conversation with the little boy.

"Better be soon," he grumbled, leading Minas Tireth and his Luggage off toward their cabin.

Meanwhile, Erik was looking around the barrels at the other end of the ship, trying to see if he could locate the hidden girl he knew had to be around there somewhere. Finally, after looking around all the barrels, he hadn't yet found her. This was frustrating. She _had_ to be somewhere nearby, what else could explain the out of character-ness and Fred's coincidental reappearance, along with that mini-Balrog. No, she was _definitely_ somewhere close. The only question was, where?

He walked around some giant crates and came upon a sight he wasn't very inclined to see. A couple of phans were crouched behind the crate, a full mini-op center set up and ready to follow Erik's every move.

"Ooh, he's coming this way!"

"How far? HOW FAR!"

"Shh! I think he's --"

"Girls," Erik said curtly by way of greeting. The phans froze.

"Um," said one of them after a minute. The other one turned around with a big grin plastered on her face.

"Hi Erik!" she squealed gleefully. After a moment of beaming up at Erik's mask and not getting a reply at all, let alone a positive one, her expression changed to one that was forlorn and she looked down, disheartened.

Her companion had the decency to look guilty and sighed. "I'll just start packing up, then." She closed her laptop and took off her headphones, putting them into her bag and reaching for the mini satellite-thing that could hear things from miles away to disconnect it. Erik waited patiently until they were both done and standing in front of him. It might be worth noting that they both had their hands at the level of their eyes, just in case.

"I don't appreciate being spied upon," he told them. "Having your every move watched is slightly annoying."

The phans nodded. Not because they agreed, but - well, actually, they kind of did. But they didn't agree that Erik should be exempt from that particular privilege. They only nodded so that they'd live.

"Do either of you know where MetaChi is?"

They pointed at the building near the dock where customers bought their tickets.

"Thank you," said Erik. "Now hand over your equipment."

The phans gasped indignantly and held their toys tightly with both hands. That was the end of it, for it gave Erik the opportunity to punjab them both. After dragging their bodies back behind the crate and dumping them into the water, he took their stuff to see how long they'd been taping him and headed off to the ticket building, whistling cheerfully.


	14. Stuff happens: Panic and Fred is a jerk

It came as a surprise to the phans gathered at their headquarters to hear of the gruesome fate of Phan Scouts #816 and #234. It really shouldn't have been a surprise, however, as the two phans who had been killed really hadn't been all that swift. No, what worried the phans more was the fact that, according to their Supah Sekrit Spy hiding aboard the ship itself, Erik now had some of their equipment. That meant he also now had access to to their database of information.

That wasn't good.

After a couple of days, the more brave among the phans finally sucked it up and reported the incident to Philippe, who wasn't pleased with this turn of events as that meant that Erik could turn the tables in his favour, using their intelligence against them. Definitely not a fun situation at all.

So Philippe ordered the phans to find a way aboard that ship, at whatever cost. The authorization of the use of the vast amount of thingies the phans had at their disposal thrilled them to no end, and they quickly scattered to throw together a haphazard and ultimately stupid plan.

From where he sat in his office, having just watched the phans scamper out, Philippe suddenly had a bad feeling about what he'd just decreed. That could easily have been because the more PotC-inclined of the phans decided that it would be fun to blast The Kraken theme at high volume throughout the building.

**x-x-x-x-x-x**

Madeleine still sat on the porch of Rouen's Old Folk's Home, knitting her sockish present for Erik. She'd ignored any attempts from both Mama Valerius and Marie to try to talk to her, finally making them give up in exasperation and stomp back into the building. At a cough, however, Madeleine looked up, ready to give the evil eye to whomever dared disturb her now. But it wasn't Valerius or Marie, to her surprise. Instead, there, standing on the lawn of the Home, was a teenage girl. Once she was sure she had the attention of Madeleine, she coughed again and unrolled a large sheet of parchment she'd brought with her for this very purpose.

"Dear Madeleine," the phangirl began, "She of the Much Maligned Behaviour toward our Much Beloved Erik, She who Sucks Mightily, She who is the Head of the Order of Bitchiness, She who should consider herself Damned Lucky that she was Not Murdered Cruelly, as in having her Entrails Cut Out and Burned by a member of the Highly Respected Order of the Devoted Erik Phangirls™, She who --"

"Oh, shut up," Madeleine interrupted. "Are you honestly here just to insult me? If that's the case, you can go to hell."

The phangirl smiled brightly. "Oh, no, madame, that's where _you're_ going. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a letter to read." She looked back down at it and continued, "we have sent one of our representatives to you with a specific purpose." She pointed proudly to herself as she kept going without pausing. "We very much regret that we must contact you in any shape or form, but this must be done. We politely request that you join us on a highly sensitive mission. This mission deals with your wonderful and holy and worshipful son Erik. We promise that you will come to no harm during the mission. We are willing to pay you quite well for your assistance." The phangirl looked up. "So what's it gonna be?"

Madeleine stared for a moment, wondering what the bleep was going on and if it was a trap. "A mission."

"That's right."

"And you need me for it?"

"Unfortunately."

"Why?"

"Erik has something we need. We were hoping that you would be kind enough to help us in retrieving it."

"Will I see him?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll come."

**x-x-x-x-x-x**

While Erik was fruitlessly searching around the ticket building for the Authoress so that he could kick her butt, the rest of the posse was on board the ship and generally wandering around.

The Siren finished up her little chat with the pre-teen boy and waved good-bye to him as he walked away. "Bye, Gaston!" she called. "I hope you remember this conversation!"

She then got to her feet as well and looked around the deck curiously. "I wonder if they have a Hometown Buffet here?" she wondered to herself and promptly took off to go sniff one out.

Nadir stood on deck as well, carefully looking around to see if that little abomination would show up and try to hurt him. He shouldn't have been this scared of it - he didn't even truly recognize it. It was just that when he saw it, he had a rush of memories that he wasn't sure were ever actually _his_ and those memories pointed to that black creature being pure evil. Just thinking about it now in his head made him shiver.

Madame Giry and Meg were off gambling. Not only were they just gambling, they were competing against each other while they did it, too.

Mina had taken off to her cabin while Morwenna was below decks trying to proposition some of the crew. To an extent, she succeeded in her endeavor.

Finally, the call for final boarding went through and Erik, after briefly contemplating not getting on board and leaving the others stuck without him, went to the ramp and boarded the ship. He didn't notice that after he'd gotten a good ways onto the deck, a small group of teenage girls swarmed the ticket taker and hurried off to go below deck, hopefully having not been noticed.

Over where he'd sat on a bench to stare at the ocean, Erik suddenly had a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The Siren strolled over to him at that moment, and Erik decided she was the cause of the ill feeling he'd just felt. It explained it, anyhow.

"Siren," he greeted wearily. The Siren plopped down on the bench next to him and handed him a paper.

"Look what I snatched from the . . . whatchamacallit. Where they steer the ship."

"The helm?"

"Yeah, that's it! Look, though, I found these after seeing what restaurants they have down there. Didja know they've got Hometown Buffet _and _Krispy Kreme?"

"No. What are those?"

"Oh yeah. See, they're brochures for a buncha places." She began shoving them toward him. "Here's one for Tokyo and one for Paris and here's one for Melbourne and look! ancient Mayan ruins!"

"Fascinating," said Erik, not bothering to look at them.

"Isn't it! Here's one for the South Pole where you can hang out with the penguins and here's one for Easter Island. Also there's some for the Bahamas and a small unknown city at the top of Greenland. You know, 'cuz some people think that's the place to go to see if the Earth's really hollow."

"That is a ridiculous theory," said Erik, handing the papers back. "I'd like some time alone, if you don't mind."

"Not at all," said the Siren, shuffling the brochures back together and pulling another one out from the stack. "You want to see the one for Peru?"

"Not particularly. Leave. Now."

"'Kay!" said the Siren, who bounced away to find her cabin and put the brochures safely away as treasured souvenirs.

Erik sighed. "I have really got to get her to see a psychologist."

**x-x-x-x-x-x**

Nadir peeked slowly around a corner, watching carefully for the demonic little . . . demon. In all honesty, he really wasn't quite sure why he was so frightened of the little thing. Usually, once you got past the shock of actually seeing one, you started to think it was kind of cute. Not so for Nadir. He felt he knew what truly lurked in its little black heart. That was why he was trying to avoid running into it - so that he wouldn't have to kill it, like in some bad horror movie.

He paused. This was stupid. And Fred seemed to have the evil little thing under control. He leaned against the wall he'd previously been using as a shield, and laughed at himself. Then he headed off to the restaurants to get a beer.

**x-x-x-x-x-x**

The Siren hummed to herself as she carefully put her brochures away, as has been referred to above, and patted them happily as she closed her suitcase. Which was waterproof, as everything she owned was. Even her iPod that she hadn't let Erik know about. She knew he had one, and that he frequently used it, but hadn't told anyone else from the continuum about it. She felt it was just the same to keep hers hidden. Besides, if Fred knew at all that she had one, she wouldn't have it anymore. Which would suck.

She finished with the repacking and stretched her arms above her head, wondering what she should go do now. She _could_ go see what Mina and Morwenna were up to, but from what she'd heard of Morwenna's voice upon passing the stairwell, she wasn't so sure she wanted to know what that was. Mina was probably in her room getting up to something rather devious, and the Siren wasn't so interested in devilish plots, either. She couldn't go back and talk to Erik - he sure didn't seem to want her around right now. Then, as that realization actually sunk in and another horrible thought followed it, the Siren placed her hand over her mouth in a gesture of shock as her eyes widened to accommodate said reaction.

_What if Erik was going to fire her?_

Was that even possible? she wondered. Would Erik ever really do that? Well, she added silently, he didn't _have_ a job any longer, especially such a well paying one, and therefore might find it a little difficult to in turn pay her. Especially given the emphasis she'd put on money in the last week. She suddenly felt a bit of guilt at that - what if, if Erik should fire her, she was the cause of her own termination?

He certainly seemed distracted up on the deck, didn't he. And he wasn't paying attention to what she said. Well, that was actually nothing out of the ordinary, but far as she could remember, he'd never actually told her he didn't want her around.

Except for all those times she had tried to find a way to be let into the house and would be met at the windows by a hissing Ayesha.

But that didn't count, right?

If he _was_ going to fire her, the Siren didn't think she could take that kind of rejection.

Well, there was only one thing to do now, the Siren said to herself, and that was to ask him. If she no longer had a job of any kind, she should know about it. And, should that be the case, she thought, she . . . she didn't know _what _she'd do.

Yep. Best to go find out and then deal with it.

After she went to go play some shuffleboard.

**x-x-x-x-x-x**

Madame Giry and Meg wandered into the ship's bar, having won quite a bit of money that would help get them quite nicely settled down in New York, wherever they decided to end up. Meg spotted Nadir sitting at the counter and motioned to Madame Giry that they should to sit next to him. She motioned her agreement and so they toddled up to him, plopping themselves down on the stools nearby.

"Daroga," Madame Giry greeted, ordering a tequila for herself. Meg got a glass of champagne.

"Madame," Nadir greeted back, wondering why they had to be there right now and why they'd chosen to come harass him. He sighed.

But then the company got worse as Fred strolled in, whistling cheerfully and waving happily at Nadir once he saw him. Then, of course, he came to sit next to him.

"Nadir," Fred drawled. "Old pal! How ya doin'?"

Nadir gritted his teeth. "Fine, until you got here."

To his annoyance, Fred laughed. "I know you don't like me," he said. "But you gotta face it. Erik's my friend too. You can't have him all to yourself." He grinned widely. Nadir wanted to punch him. Instead, he looked into his drink, muttering something about how stupid that sounded and what on Earth did he mean by that anyway.

"I mean," said Fred in that cheerful way he had that made Nadir really, really want to avoid him when he'd taken Raoul down to go confront Erik and save Christine, "Everyone knows you've got something for him."

Nadir flushed. Madame Giry and Meg offered no help, instead snickering into their drinks.

"Of course," said Fred, now leaning against the counter and pretty much ignoring his drink, "it's not as bad as what Richard and Moncharmin have. Those two are like lovesick puppies. It's a pity their wives don't realize it." He paused. "Are they married? I think they are. Aren't they?"

"I wouldn't know," Nadir muttered.

"Oh well," said Fred, looking up. He grinned. "Ah. Mademoiselle Mina, how are you this fine day?"

Mina glared at him. "What have you been doing to my uncle now?"

"Uncle?" Fred lifted an eyebrow.

"You _know _I refer to everyone as family, somehow," Mina said, crossing her arms and staring haughtily at him.

"Then what am I?" He grinned again.

"The black sheep we don't like to talk about."

"So," said Fred, "I'm the most interesting one, am I?"

"If that's how you'd like to think of yourself."

"Believe me," said Fred, "it is." He reached into his trouser pocket, withdrawing a wallet, which he then opened. "Any chance I can buy some affection from you?" He held up a bit of money and waved it tantalizingly.

Mina paused, watching him wave it around. "Oh, I suppose," she said, snatching the money from him. After tucking it safely away, she saluted him. "I'll see you later, Grandpa Fred!" And she bounced away, cackling.

Fred blinked. "_Grandpa_? What –"

Madame Giry, Meg, and Nadir erupted in laughter.


	15. Erik finds phic stuff and then they eat

If you read this, please leave a review. Honestly. Even if you totally think it sucks and want to blast me on how out of character everyone is, _please _review. Anything. Even if it's "u suk nvr rite agin." I'll beg if I have to.

**xxxxxx**

Erik, being sure that he finally had some privacy, opened up one of the suitcases at his feet and pulled out a shiny almost-new laptop. He ran his hand over the lid almost reverently, then opened it up to turn it on. As he waited for it to boot up, he wondered what he was going to find in its contents.

Would there be horribly detailed records of his everyday life?

Did they know about the bootleg videos he had of the musical? What of the music he liked? Oh, God, did they know about his secret and unholy vague fascination with modern day pop music?

Was it possible that the phans had somehow installed a surveillance camera in his house and watched him work at his organ night after night?

What about Ayesha? Were the phans even that interes --

Ayesha.

Erik blinked, trying to remember. Ayesha _was_ here, wasn't she? She had to be - Madame Giry _said _she and Meg had taken care of it and she was generally trustworthy about some things. He doubted she'd forget something like that.

Given that they'd already pulled away from port, Erik knew that if the cat had been left behind, it was too late to go get her back. Therefore, he'd have to kill Mme Giry and find a way to get back to Paris to rescue her. If by chance that fool Authoress showed up, he could force her to help him.

But at the moment, Erik had something else to take care of. By this time, the computer had finished its start-up routine and he began clicking around files, wondering if he would find anything interesting.

Soon enough, he did.

"O_ho_," he said gleefully once he realized just what it was he had on the screen. He grinned behind the mask, and committed the map to memory - just in case. Who knew if he ever might need to know the layout of the building the phans called their headquarters? Seriously. Things like this did tend to come in handy.

He began to dig deeper into the system, finding out all sorts of interesting things about his fans. Like, each of them had their own extensive profile in the Phan Database. All of them. All 1,298 of them that were currently in the continuum at that moment.

_That's quite a few to have here right now_, Erik said to himself. _Rather unnecessary, isn't it? Why? What is it that they're planning to do?_

Nonetheless, he got a bit of pleasure out of seeing what they had to say about him - since it was all flattering, of course. Even when they were addressing his faults - his resemblance to a somewhat decayed corpse, the murdering streak he had, his insanity, things like that. None of that was a big deal, anyway. At least, that was how the phans seemed to think. He liked that.

He clicked open another file and nearly died of horror when he realized just what it was. It took him a moment, but he soon realized that it was a drawing of himself dressed only in a towel, glaring at an orange that he held in his hand.

_Which of their perverted minds created this atrocity?_

He mentally poked at the drawing, not wanting to admit that it was actually a good likeness of himself and whomever had drawn it had done a good job getting him to look corpse-like and yet, sexy. It was scary. And a paradox to boot.

Erik closed the file. He debated on whether or not to continue his probing, as that picture had scared him pretty good.

In the end, he decided that that picture hadn't really been all that bad and that any possible information he might learn about the phans was more important than any disturbing things he might come across within the scary abyss that was the Phan Database.

Ten minutes later, he dropped the computer on the ground as he screamed in horror after briefly skimming an Erik/Raoul phic.

**xxxxxx**

Unfortunately for him, that was the moment the Siren came wandering back upstairs to ask him about her sudden and unusual paranoia concerning the state of her job. She broke into a run when she heard him scream and soon arrived at his bench, panicked and out of breath.

"Erik!" she gasped, doubled over and attempting to get her breath back. "What's wrong? I heard you scream!"

Erik sat there, as if frozen, staring down at the remains of the phans' computer. The Siren, once she was able to breathe again, poked him in the shoulder. He swayed a bit.

"They actually write that crap," said Erik blandly, not taking his eyes off the computer. "They actually think it's amusing to pair me up with someone other than Christine. Someone who's not even female."

The Siren waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, psh. Fanfic is harmless."

Now Erik looked up at her. "Not when they're actually suggesting that . . . that . . ." he gestured angrily and vaguely at the computer. "There was this stupid and badly written story about Raoul and I."

"Oh," said the Siren understandingly. "Well. That's not such a big deal, is it?"

"Not a big deal!" Erik repeated. "Of course it's a big deal! They're _actually _implying -"

"Are you going to fire me?" the Siren interrupted, arms crossed and looking worried while at the same time anxiously awaiting an answer. AKA, she was chewing on her bottom lip, paranoid liek woah. Erik, temporarily forgetting about what he'd just read, stared up at her in shock.

"_What?_"

"Fire me," said the Siren, looking unusually serious. "I want to know if you're going to."

"No!" Erik was surprised. "Why would you think that?"

"Because," said the Siren. "I was downstairs putting my souvenirs away, and I got to thinking."

Erik resisted a verbal jab at her, not only for what she said, but that she left herself open to it.

"You've been acting odd lately," she obliviously continued, doing odd hand motions to compliment her words. "And I started to get worried that maybe it was because you were getting ready to tell me you didn't want me around anymore." She looked a bit sad, waiting for him to say something.

"That might be," Erik began semi-sarcastically, "because I let the love of my life go live with the love of her life. Doing that nearly killed me, you know."

"I know," said the Siren, still unusually serious. "But I meant in the past few days. Like earlier." She reminded him of what he'd said.

"I wanted to look at what they've got in here!" Erik said loudly, somewhat angrily, pointing down at the computer. "I got it off a couple of phans that I killed just before we left port and I was anxious to have a peek."

"You killed some phans?" the Siren asked, immediately thinking of the other phans and how they might react.

"Damn right I did," said Erik proudly.

"Not good."

"Well, no, but it _felt_ good."

"Well, that explains what I've been feeling."

"What?"

"That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach."

Erik nodded.

"Yeah," the Siren continued. "Mine led me to think that you were gonna fire me. What about yours?"

Erik muttered something incomprehensible.

"Mmm," said the Siren, even though she hadn't understood what he'd said. "That explains it, then. They're up to something. It's causing a malfunction in the continuum."

"Er," said Erik.

"You haven't seen _The Matrix_, right?"

"No." Erik had, by now, learned to take her references to weird sounding and unusual thingies in stride and typically to ignore them.

"Right then." Given that she was apparently safe, the Siren flounced off happily, leaving Erik to shudder at the contemplation of the phans.

**xxxxxx**

That night, the gang gathered together to head down to the restaurants to have some dinner. Meg and Madame Giry were still chuckling at Fred, Fred kept grumbling something about not being _that _old, and Nadir was attempting to inconspicuously keep Darius between himself and Fred as a sort of bodyguard.

When they did enter the expansive room that served as the eating area for the guests of the ship, they chose a big table and sat down. A waiter soon bustled over to them and Erik was relieved to see that he wasn't a phan.

"Ah," said the waiter, whipping out a pen and twirling it as he brought it down to his notepad, "such a mysterious group. Yes, yes. What shall the esteemed Phantom of the Opera and his lovely guests be having this fine evening?"

They all stared at him. Instead of saying anything, the waiter merely grinned, waiting for them to order.

"Well," said Madame Giry finally, "I'd like a steak. Medium rare, please."

"Ah, yes," said the waiter, joting that down. "Excellent choice. And to drink? Might I recommend our sparkling apple cider for a bewitching woman who is as beautiful as crystal?" He bowed grandly. Madame Giry giggled. Meg rolled her eyes.

"I think I'll have that," said Madame Giry, leaning on the table and fluttering her eyelashes at him. But rather than respond to that, the waiter noted her drink and moved on.

"And what will the lovely princess have?" he asked Meg. Meg made a big show of flipping up her menu and studying the choices carefully, studiously ignoring the flattery.

"I'll have a club sandwich," she said finally. "Without tomato, please."

"Anything for such a dazzling lady," the waiter said smoothly. "And to drink?"

"Coke."

"Righto," the waiter said. He moved on to Fred. "And for the fine sir?"

"Am I old?" Fred demanded. The rest of the group snickered, hiding behind their menus, except for Erik, who didn't know what was going on with that because he'd been poking around in the Phan Database. And the Siren, who at the time was freaking out, but later heard the story from Mina firsthand.

The waiter made a show of studying him. "No, I think not. You, sir, remind me quite a bit of an actor I know of. I cannot remember his name, however."

Fred crossed his arms, grinning smugly. "Good."

"What would you like to eat?"

Fred quickly scanned his menu once more. "I'd like the grilled octopus with a side of fries. And a beer. Thanks."

The waiter nodded and wrote that down as the Siren looked scandalized, which was exactly what Fred had been going for. Given that reaction, he smirked.

"Fred!" she exclaimed a moment later. "How could you eat that?"

"Simple," said Fred, spreading his hands out on the table and then flipping them palm up. "They taste good."

The Siren looked like she was going to be sick. Fred smirked again. The waiter ignored this and moved on to Darius, who ordered a simple salad and water. Then Nadir's turn came.

"I'd like a grilled chicken with a side of mashed potatoes."

"And to drink, sir?"

"A beer, please."

"Certainly. And for you, sir?" The waiter turned to Erik.

"Lobster."

"Rice?"

"Yes."

"And to drink?"

"Mineral water."

"Coming right up," said the waiter, turning to the Siren now. But instead of waiting for her turn, she had her face plastered against the surface of the table, not wanting to think about Fred and Erik eating seafood.

"And for the unusually blue but exquisite wench?" the waiter asked, tapping his pen against the paper impatiently.

"Something that's not fishy," she groaned.

"If that's all, I'll be on my way now." When the group, with the exception of the Siren, nodded their heads, he nodded as well and disappeared. The Siren looked at Fred and Erik, doing her best to glare at them. She rather failed at the attempt. They stared back.

"How could you order that?" she demanded.

"I like octopus. It's rubbery to chew," said Fred, grinning when the Siren turned pale.

"Excuse me," she said quickly and stood up from the table to bound away to the bathroom. After a short pause of the rest of them staring at each other in slight confusion, Meg spoke up.

"She doesn't like seafood," she offered.

"We gathered that much," said Erik. "But why does the thought of it make her sick?"

They all pondered this for a moment before Fred groaned and slapped the table.

"Isn't it obvious?" he said. "She's a creature of the sea. Fish are her friends, yadda yadda yadda. It'd be like forcing Ariel to watch someone eat Flounder."

"Oh," they all said, understanding now.

"Well," said Erik, "perhaps I ought to reconsider my order."

"Why?" said Fred.

"Didn't you just explain why?"

Fred rolled his eyes. "Yes, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't torment her."

"Is this about that paintball game?" Nadir couldn't help but ask.

"This is bigger than the paintball game!" Fred shouted, slamming his fist into the table. He winced slightly in pain, but tried not to let it show.

"If you have some problem with the Siren," Erik told him, "you should talk to her about it."

"I don't think so," Fred growled, and refused to talk any more about it, instead waiting sulkily for his food to come, and, when it did, jabbed his fork into it several times before taking a bite, exaggerating each chew and swallow to further offend the Siren.

When the Siren came back, she sat down warily, watching the rest of them dig into their food. She picked up her fork and poked at her apple pie a few times before giving up, having lost her appetite. After a few minutes of watching Fred torment her and seeing Erik work on eating his lobster, she gave up and excused herself from the table, saying she was going to go hang out on deck and maybe play some more shuffleboard.

The rest of the group shrugged and kept going at their food.


	16. Erik looks for Ayesha, Attack of the Sue

Dinner ended soon after and our heroes left the restaurant, immediately breaking off into three, soon to be four, groups: Nadir and Darius headed down the hallway to the left, followed at a distance by Fred. Madame Giry and Meg headed right, flanked by Erik. They didn't realize at first that they were in fact being followed until Erik took hold of Madame Giry's elbow and didn't let go until she turned to face him. Then he crossed his arms, looking very much like a dark shadow standing for no discernible reason in the brightly lit hallway.

"Yes?" she asked, sounding cheerful despite her normal melancholy nature. Meg, standing off to the side, watched them both warily and rather hoping her mother carried a sword inside that cane of hers. After all, Erik _was _prone to rapid mood swings, including violent rages. Christine had told her allabout that, leaving out no small detail. Meg, quite honestly, apart from being slightly repulsed, thought her friend's experiences at the hand of a madman such as this one would be quite stimulating. But she would never admit that aloud for fear of giving off the wrong impression.

"Where is Ayesha?" Erik demanded.

"Ayesha?" Madame Giry repeated, looking puzzled. "Haven't you got her in your room?"

"No," Erik answered. "You said you'd taken care of my stuff. I believe that would include my most beloved companion."

(Elsewhere, Nadir, Christine, and the Siren felt vaguely insulted for no reason they could discern.)

" -- knew there was something between you and that cat," Meg mumbled quietly, recalling some of Christine's story. At the sound, Erik turned toward her with a violent ferocity that both scared and thrilled her. And no, not in a sexual way, so shush.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing!" said Meg brightly, trying to hide the fact that she was shaking slightly by pretending to smooth her dress. That seemingly innocent act always worked, right? Erik glared suspiciously at her for a moment before turning back to the elder Giry. She breathed a small sigh of relief, shutting up when she saw those golden eyes flicker in her direction.

"I should hope, for your sake, madame, that my precious kitten is somewhere on this boat." And Erik turned away with a flourish, leaving the two Girys to gape at his quickly receding form.

"Mom?" Meg asked after a moment.

"Shit," was all Madame Giry would say.

**xxxxxx**

Erik headed down into the bowels of the ship, down toward the cargo holds. The going was slow, mostly because of the fact it seemed that the closer he'd get to where his stuff was being held, and the closer to hopefully finding Ayesha, the more crew members would pop up to try and block his path. After the fifth of these had appeared to be an obstacle, he had, in exasperation, just begun punjabbing the hell out of them all. He continued down the hall, leaving a trail of bodies not only that of the crew, but also a small group of inexperienced phans who'd landed accidentally within the continuum and hadn't yet been nabbed by the Phan Organization for official training.

Erik headed down the hall, leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake. After a short amount of time, perhaps because the other crew members got word of what was going on, Erik met no more resistance on his quest to find Ayesha. Also no more phans got in his way, because he'd killed every one of them aboard the ship at the moment. Of course, that didn't count the Ninja!Phans that were at that moment sneaking up the sides of the ship to keep tabs on him and secretly search for the stolen computer.

Within ten minutes, which would have been less if Erik hadn't gotten lost, he opened the door to the vault that held the cargo. A whiff of smoke blasted him in the mask, which, thankfully, he was wearing so he didn't have much, if any, trouble breathing. He stepped slowly toward the room, almost expecting a squeal of glee and an attempted glomp, which he would then thwart by stepping aside and allowing the phan to knock herself out by smacking her head on the door. Then he would kill her and go inside to search.

That didn't happen.

What did happen was completely unexpected, even for Erik, even after everything that had happened in the last two weeks.

A Mary Sue stepped out from the fog and smiled sweetly at him. Erik fingered his lasso, ready to loop it around the Sue's neck at a millisecond's notice. He almost didn't get that chance, as his expectations quickly morphed to her trying to seduce him.

That didn't happen.

He certainly wasn't expecting her to pull a small dagger from somewhere within the recesses of her abnormally poofy dress and lunge at him in an attempt to drive that dagger directly into his heart.

His instincts, luckily, took over and he dropped to the floor with an almost inhuman speed, perhaps that of a brick, knocking her arm aside as he did so. The force of her lunge sent her sailing right over Erik and as that happened, she flipped over in midair to land painfully on her side.

"Owww," she groaned. Erik rose quickly back to his feet and reached for the now bloody knife as fast as he could. Unfortunately, she got to it first and hopped to her feet, ignoring the blood seeping out from her upper arm where she'd cut herself during her fall. Erik's eyes flickered to the wound, studying it quickly. Then he straightened up from his fighting stance, crossed his arms, and waited patiently. The Sue grinned victoriously, thinking that he'd given up, that he knew he was no match for her mighty might, and had just begun to move forward for another attack when she stopped dead. After a couple seconds of puzzlement and also her expression seeming to say "Wait! OMG! I haven't fulfilled my destiny yeeeeeeeeeet!" her eyes rolled up in her head and she dropped like a sack of moldy beans back to the floor, falling again on her knife for good measure. Once he was sure she was actually dead, Erik bent down to roll the body over and pick up the knife, wiping it on a handkerchief he just happened to have in his pocket. He thought, as he wiped it clean, perhaps he could present this as a gift to his own Sueish daughter. The knife, that was, not the bloody handkerchief. Though, if he knew his supposed daughter even remotely, he realized that she would probably also appreciate the blood.

He felt himself being watched, so he glanced up to look over the body.

Minas Tireth was directly in front of him, sitting on his haunches, grinning a feral grin and wielding a napkin and a metal spork. When Erik stood up, turning the dagger over in his hands and then gripping it in case of another possible attack, since he wasn't sure if strangulation could work on this creature, the mini-Balrog took that action as permission and moved closer to the body, where he began jabbing the spork into the exposed arm. Ripping out a bloody chunk of flesh, he popped it into his mouth and chewed silently, almost thoughtfully. If he could talk, he likely would have cracked a joke along the lines of it tasting like chicken. Or perhaps ham.

Erik ignored the nasty actions of the mini-Balrog and entered the room once more, slowly but surely, listening carefully for any sound that might indicate a phan or, heaven forbid, another of those dangerously gorgeous girls with killer reflexes. Luckily, he didn't see anything out of the ordinary and continued into the warehouse sized room, trying to figure out where his stuff was being held. After a quick calculation based on when Mme Giry _had _told him everything was taken care of and when the ship had actually left port, Erik figured his stuff couldn't be too far in, and climbed up onto a crate to look around for his organ. He spotted it, unboxed, over by the wall and hopped down from his vantage point to meander over there.

After looking around quickly, he didn't see Ayesha's kitty carrier anywhere, or hear her voice when he called her name. This sent him into a mild panic and he began tossing boxes and containers all around quickly, praying he'd see her Siamese face mewing indignantly at him any second.

When he'd made a right mess of the place and had no sign whatsoever of finding her, Erik sat heavily down on a box that wasn't his and stared at that mess, feeling like he was going to cry.

He had been a fool to trust the crazy old woman. Hell, the _Siren _would have been more trustworthy with something like this. She took excellent care of treasured things, despite her chaotic nature. Like that iPod she thought he didn't know she had. She'd had that thing for years and it hadn't broken once, whereas the one he'd gotten hold of shortly after discovering hers had malfunctioned eight times in half as many months.

He had remained sitting on the box, crouched, with his knees drawn up to his chest and silently crying, for probably an hour. He wasn't sure how much time had gone by when the sudden sound of blaring music caused him to fall off his box and land face first on the floor. He stayed like that for a couple minutes, just laying there and just trying to make sense of what he was hearing.

_"Standin' on your mama's porch, you told me that you'd wait forever. Oh and when you held my hand I knew that it was now or never."_

That song soon ended and another one quickly took its place. But in that short silence between songs, he heard a chattering of voices - normal voices, not disembodied singing ones.

_"Just take those old records off the shelf - I'll sit and listen to 'em by myself."_

Erik got to his feet and, trying to ignore the pain running down his left side, noticed that the door to the room was now closed. For a moment, he wondered if he was going to be able to get out. He pushed that thought aside - what he needed to do now was find whoever was down here and see if they had any information concerning the whereabouts of Ayesha. Then he would face the possible problem of the door.

It took a bit of searching and a cycling through three songs (_"the boy with the cold hard cash is always Mr. Right, 'cause we are living in a material world,") _but he did find them.

There were two girls sitting on lawn chairs and reading. One was reading _The Ring _manga, and the other was reading _Dracula_. They didn't seem to notice him, instead mouthing along with the lyrics (_"'terial girl, I'm a material girl.") _and therefore didn't hear him when he cleared his throat, which had panicked the phans on the dock. He remained there, staring hard at the two girls, until one of them (the one reading _The Ring)_ reached for her drink and happened to glance up. Her eyes widened at seeing him there, tall, dark, and . . . yeah, hardly handsome. But damn sexy nonetheless. She dropped her manga and began poking her friend in the shoulder. Her friend fwapped her hand away.

"Hey," said the one reading _Dracula_, not lifting her eyes from the text and somehow making herself heard over the now deafening music, "you know I said you could come with me if you didn't start spouting theories and stuff."

The redhead rolled her eyes and hit pause on their stereo. "It's Erik."

Immediately the Authoress, for that's who she was, dropped _Dracula_ and leapt to her feet, raising her hand parallel to her head. "Uh," she said. "Hi, Erik?"

"That's not necessary," he told her.

"What's not necessary?" she asked.

"Your hand. I'm not going to kill you."

"I don't trust you," she said, and left her hand where it was.

"I just want to know where Ayesha is." He sounded like he was almost pleading. The Authoress blinked.

"Ayesha?" she repeated. "Isn't she with you?"

"No!" Erik shouted. "If she was, would I be here asking _you_!"

"Hmm," said the Authoress. "Good point."

The Authoress's friend mumbled something directly out of _Hitchhiker's_, about humans stating the obvious. The Authoress pointed at her with her free hand.

"Shut up!" She looked up at Erik. "You have my permission to punjab her, if you'd like."

"I'm not killing anyone," Erik said.

"Damn," said the Authoress.

"Can't kill me anyway," the redhead gloated. "I'm your alter-ego. Nyah."

The Authoress winced. "Not anymore, you're not. You're a character in your own right."

"Then you'd suffer the wrath of _both _Ath --"

"Ayesha," Erik interrupted. "I want my cat back."

"Oh yeah," said the Authoress. "Well, I haven't got her."

"That doesn't help."

"She is somewhere on this ship, though."

"Where?"

"How should I know?" The Authoress shrugged. "Can I go back to my book now?"

Erik tapped a foot impatiently, glaring down at the young woman. She stared back as best she could.

After a moment, she sighed. "_Fine_," she relented. "Check Fred's room."

"Fred?" Erik's eyes narrowed.

"He's trying to learn to talk to her, to get her to kill the Siren in her sleep. Ayesha's tempted, but won't go for it, as she knows it'll just inconvenience her even more since you'd have to search for a new servant. Now can I go back to my book?"

"All right," said Erik, turning to walk away. Behind him, the Authoress plopped back down on her chair and retrieved her book.

"Were you serious about him killing me?" the redhead asked.

"Of course not," the Authoress replied. "It's not like you can actually stay dead, anyway."

"Dying at all is painful."

"How do you know that?"

The conversation faded as he kept going, and music came back on as he went through the door (there was a handle on both sides of it, thankfully) and he heard a few lyrics (_"Risin' up to the challenge of our rival"_)before he closed the door with a sigh of relief.

As he headed purposefully down the hall, he passed Minas Tireth, who now had the Sue's body gutted and was eating her spleen slowly, to relish the taste. The mini-Balrog waved at him as he went by.

Unfortunately for Erik, he hadn't the slightest idea where Fred's room was and hadn't asked that stupid girl for directions. Damn it. Well, she had said Ayesha was on board. That was a plus. And since he doubted that Fred would dare treat her as if she was less than royalty, that was probably okay. Erik turned down a hall to head to his room.

When he arrived in front of his door and fumbled for the key in his pocket, he also withdrew the knife and bloody handkerchief as well, to wrap up as presents. He unlocked the door and set the two gifts down on a table next to the door. Then he went to the desk and pulled out the phans' computer from where he'd stashed it. He set it on the desk and turned it on to begin rummaging through the files again, this time being far more careful not to come across anything . . . unsavory. Yes. Unsavory is a good word.

The next morning, after a fruitful night of searching through the computer's drives and 'Net connection (so what if that's impossible), Erik left the room to try to find Fred. Not more than a minute after he did, a group of ninja!phans exited the room and looked at each other in bewilderment.

"Man," said one of them. "Does that guy never sleep?"


	17. Phans execute the plan and hit a glitch

The next couple of hours went by quickly as Erik searched high and low for Fred, to demand the return of his cat. To tell the truth, he was a bit surprised that she hadn't clawed Fred's eyes out yet to get back to him.

Or perhaps she had and that was why he couldn't find the guy.

Erik paused in the hallway, tapping his foot impatiently, wanting desperately to have his cat back. And then, without warning, the world exploded in a flurry of activity. The people who had been on the deck upstairs came rushing downstairs, and . . . well, no one went in the opposite direction.

Well, no one did, until the group of Ninja!Phans scuttled by on the ceiling, using their cool sticky footpad things. Erik, somehow managing to stay put amid the sea of panicked humanity, turned to watch them disappear down the hall. Then, without warning, the Siren, Mina, Morwenna, and Fred suddenly appeared, shouldering their way through the stream of people, past him, and dashed up the stairs.

Erik watched this as well, pausing for approximately three seconds before shouting "Fred! Wait!" and taking off after the group. Or, would have taken off after them, had there not been hundreds of people clogging up the hall. He shoved past them as fast and best as he could, sighing when he couldn't.

"Ahem." A voice cut through the panicked murmurs, just above his head. Erik looked up. There, perched on the ceiling, was an upside down face whose eyes looked out at him from behind thick glasses. The head staring at him had very short brown hair, which was lucky as if it had been long, it would have been a serious hindrance to her mission.

"Hi," said the Ninja!Phan, for that's who she was, reaching down as if she intended to shake hands. "Look, if you need a lift, I can help you."

Erik stared dubiously, still managing to stay in one spot despite the raging horde all around him.

The Ninja!Phan sighed. "I have an extra pair of sticky feet things, if you'd like it."

Erik considered this.

"You'd better hurry and decide," she urged.

Erik reached up, palm open and ready, the universal gesture of _gimme now!_ She grinned and, somehow managing not to fall off the ceiling, opened her backpack to hand the extra equipment over. Erik quickly got them on his knees, managing to not get trampled when he sat on the floor, and put them on his hands. He shoved his way over to the wall, where he tested the equipment slowly, and then climbed up the wall. Yes, weird Spidey-like mental image. No, I don't care.

No one other than the Ninja!Phan paid any attention when Erik turned off the wall and up onto the ceiling to follow after his guide.

"This is undignified," he muttered.

"Yeah, well," said the Ninja!Phan. "So's your obsession with your cat."

Under his mask, Erik flushed. "That is none of your business."

"Sure it isn't. So, find anything interesting in our computer?"

Erik stopped dead, staring after her. Out of the corner of his eyes, underneath him, he could still see people milling about the hall, waiting to get to the safety of their rooms and their stuff. _This is so weird_, he thought.

"No," he said aloud. "Other than the fact that you lot are perverted and need serious help."

"If you say so," said the Ninja!Phan, turning around and taking her hand off the ceiling, to give her body a lopsided look. She held it out to Erik. Her hand, that is.

"Hi," said the Ninja!Phan again. "I'm Phan #557. You can call me Agent Lithium. Please don't Punjab me."

"You're a type of battery?" Erik asked, catching a random bit of knowledge swimming about within the Universe.

She blinked. "What? No!" She stared at him some more, hand still outstretched, but when all he did was stare back, she turned around again, replaced her hand on the ceiling, and started to crawl slowly again toward the stairs. After a moment, she looked back.

"You coming?"

"Yes," said Erik after another moment, trying to get the oddity of this situation out of his mind. He decided the best way to do that was to do what he said he was doing, which was to follow this girl. So he did precisely that.

When they reached the stairs, they detached themselves from the ceiling to drop to the floor and ran up the stairs without taking the sticky foot things off.

The sight that greeted them left them both breathless, even though one of the two had known it was coming. But then Agent Lithium had realized just what it was that was going on here, and the unique opportunity she had, and so glomped Erik with all her small might. She managed to keep her hand by her head while she did it, too, so that the only danger that might result from this action was a broken spine. She wasn't worried about that, not really.

After a moment of furious hugging, she let him up and backed away quickly, looking apologetic and hoping he really wouldn't attempt a kill.

Fortunately for her, even after just being glomped, Erik was rather distracted. And not by the glomp. He got to his feet, brushed himself off, and stared out at sea.

While he was distracted, Agent Lithium snuck over to rejoin her cohorts and they in turn snuck over to the side of the ship, and then, with one fluid leap, they jumped over the side.

No one else noticed. They were all too busy staring at the old ship sitting about twenty feet away from their own ship.

Erik walked over to join the sailors standing on deck, as well as the Siren and Fred. And Mina and Morwenna, who'd shown up at one point or another.

Immediately, from the short distance out into the water, a rolling shout of rabid cheering went up, accompanied by The Wave. You know what I'm talking about. Erik felt a chill climb up his spine.

"Oh, no," he whispered. Everyone else turned to look at him, and Erik got another sinking feeling in his stomach, much like the one he'd felt yesterday morning that he'd attributed to the Siren's sudden and distracting appearance.

"It's a ship," a Random Sailor pointlessly offered. "We're not quite sure who it belongs to, though."

Another of the sailors, who'd been trying to get Morwenna's attention, looked over. "Well, we know it's from America," he said. "We just don't know who's on it."

"It's the phans," the Siren supplied, not bothering to glance away from where she was steadfastly staring out at the ocean.

"That is so cheesy," Mina complained suddenly, wanting something to happen.

"Well, at least they didn't go for a look similar to the Pearl, right?" the Siren asked.

The phans, who had heard the complaints, booed.

"Oh, c'mon!" Phan #332 called. "Ya gotta admit this is cool!"

"Only if you stop trying to badly impersonate Syndrome!" a voice next to the group called back angrily. Only semi-recognizing it, everyone turned around.

"You," Erik growled. The Authoress waved. Then she had to move quickly to avoid being on the wrong end of Erik's Lasso.

"Hey," she said. "Why're you - whoa - so mad at me - whoo, almost got me there - this time?"

"Because," Erik snapped, trying again and again to catch her and not being able to because she was bending the reality of the phic and therefore managing to avoid him, "I want you to give me Ayesha. Right now."

"Mmm, no," she said. "Find her yourself. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna just leave and . . . I dunno, play Parcheesi with Raoul, or something." She poofed away.

Erik stopped dead and snapped his fingers. "Dammit!" he cursed, returning to the rest of the group.

A flurry of motion on the opposing ship caught their attention, and the phans banded together on the deck of their ship, waving madly, as if they were posing for a photograph.

"Hi Erik!" they called happily. Erik sighed, then gave back a little wave. The resulting squee from the phans was big enough and loud enough to cause a tear in the space-time continuum. Well, one bigger than the one that was already in place, anyway.

"Erik!" called a dignified looking phan at the forefront of the other phans. "We want our stuff back!"

"What stuff?" he called back.

"The stuff you took when you killed a couple of our friends!"

Aside, Mina groaned and muttered something about Erik really having to stop killing people or she'd throw a tantrum. He ignored that.

"Oh, _that _stuff," he said coolly. "I misplaced it."

There was an icy silence from the other ship.

"_Lost _it?" the leader phan called dangerously, her tone implying a dire warning. That phan was one of the Devoted Erik Phangirls™, the head order of the phans. This one wasn't Phan A, but that was because there was no Phan A. Too much of a risk of getting confused with Weapon A. Which wasn't on the ship. This phan was high up in the ranks, though. Her name was Phan D. She didn't like being lumped in with the rest of the phans, or even with her Devoted colleagues. No, she hated it. But she had no choice but to keep her letter or she'd be kicked out of the Organization, so she began calling herself Tenacious D. There had been no problem when she renamed herself, and she was happy because of her returned individuality.

"Yes," Erik shouted. "I'm not quite sure what I did with it."

"He's lying!" the phans to the right of the crowd cried.

"He wouldn't!" some of the other phans snapped.

Tenacious D remained silent for a few minutes. Then,

"Just give back what is rightfully ours and we'll let you go free."

"Are you threatening us?" the sailors shouted. They were answered by a wave of nodding from across the bit of water that separated them. They groaned.

"Sorry," said Erik. "I can't do that if I don't know where it is."

"We know you brought it with you onto the ship. Go look for it."

Erik pondered a moment. "And if I should refuse?"

Tenacious D made a vague gesture with her right hand. Immediately, a group of phans among the crowd detached themselves from said crowd and disappeared. A moment later, they reappeared, forcing a tall dark-haired woman to the front of the crowd to stop next to the Devoted Erik Phangirl™. Tenacious D grinned viciously.

The woman waved sheepishly. Erik started, feeling almost like he'd been punched in the gut.

"Mom?" he whispered.

The mouths of Mina and Morwenna dropped open in surprise. "What the _hell_!" they screamed.

"That's right," Tenacious D called over smugly. She snapped her fingers and a phan stepped forward, brandishing a pistol. "You don't give us what we want, we kill Madeleine."

Madeleine blinked in surprise and turned toward Ms. D angrily. "You promised you wouldn't hurt me!"

"We lied," she replied levelly, not taking her gaze away from Erik. "So," she called. "Will you give us our stuff back now?"

Erik tapped his foot in frustration, contemplating the situation.

Then he said, "No."

This time, Madeleine felt like she'd been punched in the gut.

"So be it," said Tenacious D, motioning to the phan with the gun. The phan grinned and readied the pistol. "Last chance, Erik," she added. "We really don't want to do this, but we need our computers back."

"I've already broken one of them," Erik called back. "I was searching through your database -"

The phans twittered.

"- and I came across this . . . _horrible _piece of writing. I threw the computer to the floor, effectively causing it to cease functioning."

"Damn," said Tenacious D, motioning to the armed phan again. That phan stepped forward, gun at the ready. Meanwhile, the Ninja!Phans had rowed the boat they'd hopped onto over to the bigger ship and scurried up the sides quickly, scrambling onto the deck.

Agent Lithium stepped forward, holding up a backpack belonging to one of the other Ninja!Phans, and tossed it to Tenacious D.

"We got it," she said. The phans cheered and Madeleine breathed a sigh of relief. Tenacious D opened it quickly and pulled out the laptop. She held it up triumphantly.

"We've got it back, girls!" she said to the crowd of still-cheering phans.

Over on the cruise ship, Erik seethed and gripped the railing until his knuckles turned white. Whiter than usual, anyway.

"Since you have it again," he shouted, "let her go free."

"I don't think so," Tenacious D called back. "_You _didn't return it to us. We had to resort to sneaky measures to get it back. You had your chance, you know."

"Don't kill her. There's no reason to."

"Yes there is," Tenacious D said. "We've always wanted this bitch dead." Then she nodded her permission and Phan #666, the one with the pistol, stepped forward again, bloodlust in her eyes, and placed the gun against Madeleine's temple. Madeleine closed her eyes in defeat, and the phans all leaned forward eagerly, but not close enough to be in the path of any flying blood, should that happen.

And then, without warning, with a clash of cymbals and an echoed shout of "Kiss my furry ass!", a beat up old black and white car appeared from a black hole just off the bow of the phans' ship, crashed onto the deck with a sickening crunch, and slid to a stop a very, very short distance from the phans. Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at the old 1960's DeSoto, then blinked when two anthropomorphic animals opened the doors and climbed out. One of them was a six-foot tall brown dog wearing a light blue suit and a matching hat, the other was a much smaller and naked hyper kinetic rabbity thing.

"Huh," said the white rabbit, grinning widely, grinning a grin that was full of razor sharp teeth, a grin that shot a lethal dose of fear into the phans' hearts - well, into the hearts of those who didn't know who these cuckoos were.

"I'm not a cuckoo, I'm a lagomorph!" said the bunny indignantly.

"Max, that comment was just the eventual product of an antisocial human female who has nothing better to do with her time than to spend it writing long, irregular, and ultimately dissatisfactory stories that contradict and defile established canon, therefore manipulating us in terrifying and grisly ways," said the dog.

"Sounds like we have an admirer," said Max.

The dog put his hands - er, paws, into his pockets and studied the situation at hand. "Well," he said. "It seems as though we've got another somewhat erratic kidnapping scenario that may end in a horrifying and likely bloody death."

A phan at the back of the crowd jumped up and down eagerly, trying to see them, and squeed 'til her heart burst and she died.

Max remained silent, unable to keep still and flexing his fingers eagerly, still grinning that freaky grin. Sam took his paws out of his pockets.

Tenacious D stepped forward. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Sam, he's Max," said Sam, taking his badge out of his pocket to flash it at Tenacious D.

"We're Freelance Police!" Max added. After replacing the badge within his coat, Sam also replaced his paws in his pockets.

Tenacious D turned around and nodded at Phan #666, who grinned evilly and pointed the gun at Max. A couple of the phans gasped accordingly.

"Aw, look, Sam." Max grinned his rabid death bunny grin, pulling a Luger from nowhere and aiming it right back at Phan #666. "She's almost as bloodthirsty and insane as I am!"

Tenacious D stared. "Where'd that come from?"

"None of your damn business," said Max. Phan #666 fired, missing the lagomorph and the canine shamus, landing a bullet right into the place right between the windshield and roof, somehow causing the roof to go flying away. It landed in the water and sunk with a death gurgle. The windshield was somehow perfectly intact.

Sam and Max stared at the decapitated car in shock.

"My car!" Sam howled, taking his paws out of his pockets to reach toward the car and pat it protectively. "Wait. This unforeseen turn of events may actually be a positive development in our odd and strangely pixelated existence, allowing our car to have a sleek new look for our new series of video games that will debut this fall."

"Hey, Sam," said Max. "Since you're done with our necessary and shameless advertising, can we do dreadfully invasive things to them now?"

Sam nodded and gestured vaguely. "Can't think of a reason not to."

Max grinned, which wasn't a change from how he usually looked, and leapt off screen toward the phans.

Aside from those few who squeed, the phans screamed bloody murder when they realized just what it was that the adorable and marketable yet episodic sociopathic lagomorph was capable of.

"Holy butterdog on a flaming grill with a side of cheese and mustard!" said Sam, watching the carnage take place. He put his paws back into his pockets.

Only a couple seconds later, Max was finished and stood among the carnage, still grinning that razor-toothed grin of his. A few feet away, Madeleine and the surviving phans shivered fearfully, staring at the smeared remains of Tenacious D and Phan #666, among some other phans who'd tried to get involved, on the deck.

"That was a strangely unpleasant sight," said Sam, taking his paws out of his pockets. "Shall we go?"

"Not so unpleasant as what I might've done if they called me a cuckoo again," said Max as he separated the head of Phan #666 from her body and taking it with him as a trophy as he waddled back over to the car. He patted it. "I'm gonna keep you as a pet. I'll call you Skippy!"

"I hope this one's not a ticking time bomb," said Sam.

"It's better," said Max, waving the head around by its hair and causing it to drip blood, "it's a fully functional PDA! Can I drive?"

"Not if you don't mind me clawing at the dash and shrieking like a cheerleader," Sam replied, heading back to the car as well, but over to the driver's side, despite what he'd just said.

"Sam, don't reuse your old lines, that'll get starchy," said Max, tossing the head into the car and hopping in on the passenger side. Sam climbed in as well and floored it. With a roar, the car sped off the side of the ship and crashed into the water, where they entered another plothole and went home.

The last they heard of those two was Max's voice, floating up from the water. "Sam, is pixelated a real word?"

The phans, even those who knew Sam & Max, blinked in shock. Madeleine trembled.

Over on the cruise ship, Erik and company had just been staring, dumbfounded, at what had just happened.

Unsurprisingly, Fred was the first to speak. "That," he said, "kicked some serious ass."

Off to the side, Mina nodded slowly. "That it did," she agreed blandly, sounding as if she herself was in shock.

Erik turned to the sailors, who looked green, as if they might be sick any second.

"Get us over there," he demanded. "We need to help them."

"Even the phans?" Mina wondered.

"Yes," Erik replied after a moment. "Even the phans."

The sailors walked away, to go tell the Captain that they really needed to start moving again, and to give some people a bunch of needed assistance.

Within five minutes, they were situated right next to the opposing ship, and everyone climbed over onto it. They all helped the phans over to their own ship, and Erik carefully escorted Madeleine over the railing, showed her to a bench, and got involved in a conversation with the doctor, who had been called up when the sailors had gone to the Captain.

Off to the side, where she was slowly recovering from the shock of seeing a rabid freaky bunny-thing tear into her (kinda) boss and rip her to pieces, Agent Lithium narrowed her eyes at Madeleine. She looked around at the positions of her fellow phans, and over at Erik, then at Nadir, the Siren, Mina, Morwenna, and Fred. She deliberated for a moment on whether or not she should chase down the four fancharacters, especially Mina and Morwenna, but no. She would be outnumbered. So she discarded that particular mode of attack in favour of another much more satisfying one.

Quickly forming a possible strategy around that plan, she reviewed it, then decided she had maybe a chance of pulling it off. She nudged the phan closest to her and told her of her plan in a whispered hush. After a moment, the phan nodded her agreement to the proposal and stood up when Lithium did, reaching for the only weapon she possessed, which, unfortunately, was a spork. Oh, well. Better than nothing. Lithium, on the other hand, reached into her cloak and withdrew her whip. She grinned evilly, and slowly began to make her way toward where Madeleine sat on a bench, unblinking and staring straight ahead and where Erik stood nearby, talking to the doctor. She'd have to do this fast and pray she succeeded. She desperately wanted to give a battle cry, perhaps a yell of "Die, BITCH!" But that would give Erik a warning and she didn't want that. Or maybe he'd let her get away with it, even if earlier he didn't seem like he'd wanted her to die.

Oh well, only one way to find out. And even if she didn't succeed, at least Madeleine would suffer some pain, some retribution for what she'd done.

And then Lithium paused, reminded suddenly, forcefully, of something.

_Ahahaha_, she thought. _This is like that scene on the Dutchman. Man, that was hot. Mmm, Bondage!Will._

She pushed her fangirly thoughts aside and continued to approach the bench on which Madeleine sat, rising up slowly behind her like some demonic creature thing, and really having to resist the urge to belt out some sort of battle cry. Fortunately, no one seemed to have noticed her, and she brought the whip down with a loud _crack_, hitting her between her neck and shoulder. Even before Madeleine slumped down on the bench, Lithium had already made her escape, giving her accomplice a high-five as she dropped to the ground, hopefully inconspicuously, just as everyone turned toward them. Erik's eyes widened under his mask, and after a quick second of wondering how on Earth _that_ had happened, realized it was the phans' fault. He watched as the doctor quickly ordered the sailors to hurry get Madeleine safely down to the infirmary, then turned to the phans.

"Bus_ted_," Mina taunted.

They waited, holding their breaths, as Erik started to yell at them.

**x**

" -- and the rest of you may have become injured," Erik finished up, staring sternly at them all. "I would vastly appreciate it if you didn't take it into your heads to ever kidnap or harm my mother again."

"Aww, _man_," the phans grumbled, not liking the fact that one of their favourite hobbies had just been outlawed.

"But she's not your mother!" a phan suggested. "She certainly didn't do anything to deserve the title!"

"Nonetheless," said Erik calmly, calmly because he'd just killed her. "Don't do it." The remaining phans grumbled.

"Are you listening to me?" he demanded. They nodded meekly. "Good." And he left, headed off toward the stairs to get to the infirmary. Not to be left behind, his posse hastened after him.

Left unattended, the phans who hadn't wound up on the wrong end of Erik's lasso grinned at each other.

**xxxxxx**

I don't own Agent Lithium - she belongs to herself. I don't own the name Tenacious D, unfortunately. Sam and Max are Freelance Police and therefore don't belong to anyone (except they're totally the property of Steve Purcell. But don't tell them that, they might get offended.)


	18. It's all about Madeleine, baby

Later, Erik, Nadir, Mina, Morwenna, Fred, and the Siren were gathered in the ship's infirmary, anxiously awaiting any news from the doctor on Madeleine's condition, any at all, whether it was good or bad.

"That was the strangest looking blood I've ever seen," Mina commented, looking up at Erik. "Is Grandma part alien?"

"No," said Erik shortly, still trying to ignore the oddity of her mere existence.

"Yes," Fred contradicted from the other side of the room. "He just doesn't want to tell you that you're related to the Beeblebroxes."

Mina's eyes widened. "Are you serious?"

"Oh, sure," said Fred coolly. "You were never meant to know. It's a highly kept secret."

"Then how do _you_ know it?" Mina asked, leaning forward in her chair.

"Secret government records." Fred nodded confidently. Mina's eyes sparkled.

"_Really_?"

"No." Fred laughed when Mina frowned, then explained, "I had to get back at you for calling me grandpa." He snickered, but yelped in pain when Mina threw the coffee machine at his head. "Ow! Hey!"

At that moment, the doctor peeked through the door, looking melancholy. The group hopped to their feet, Fred rubbing his head.

The doctor sighed. "I'm afraid I have good news and bad news," he began, then decided to just cut the cheese and get right to the point of the reason why he was here. "The good news is that she isn't badly hurt."

The group breathed a sigh of relief.

"The bad news," said the doctor, consulting his notes, "is that she seems to be severely traumatized."

"Like how?" Morwenna demanded, bullying her way past everyone to shake the doctor by his shoulders. "What exactly is wrong with her? Will I still be able to torment her about the greatest mistake she ever made?"

The doctor blinked. "Ma'am," he tried to say several times, "please let go of me."

Finally, with great reluctance, she did as he asked and waited for his answer.

"I'm not sure I know what you mean," he said finally, "but I believe that with counseling, she will recover."

Morwenna nodded and Mina spoke up. "May we visit her?"

The doctor nodded, allowing the group to push past him, but stopping the Siren, Fred, and Nadir.

"I'm sorry," he said, untroubled by the former's odd appearance, "family only."

Nadir nodded amiably and sat back down with a magazine.

"I beg your pardon?!" the Siren demanded. "I'm just as much their family as they're their family!"

"C'mon, Siren," Fred said gently, taking hold of one of the Siren's arms to guide her away from the doctor and sit her down in a chair. She stared up at him with her wide anime eyes, then blinked and mmphed when he shoved a giant sized lollipop into her mouth.

"Shut up," he told her, and went to get a magazine. The Siren looked vaguely disgruntled, but sucked on the lolly anyway.

Inside the infirmary, Erik, Mina, and Morwenna peeked into Madeleine's room to see her batting at the air and grinning.

"No, no, Jayne," she said. "Come back. I want to see your guns." She giggled. Mina looked very, very disturbed.

"That's _nasty_," she said.

Erik stepped into the room, hovering near the doorway, unsure if he should go any further. Mina and Morwenna followed, but stayed behind him, staring at Madeleine. And the big clunky neck brace she wore that looked uncomfortable, but won't be mentioned again because it had no bearing or importance on the overall plot.

"One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish," she muttered. "The mongoose dog knows your every move."

"Mother?" said Erik slowly, taking a few steps forward.

Madeleine looked up. "I told you to stop eating the macaroni," she told him. "Did you go to Peru just like you'd always wanted?"

Erik stayed silent, baffled by the nonsense she was spouting. Mina peered out from behind him.

"Huh," she said. "What did they do to her?"

"I don't think they did anything," said Erik after a moment. "I believe she was always on the verge of insanity. The attack of that rabbit must have pushed her over the brink."

"Then didn't he cause it?"

"I will never give up to the likes of giraffes!" Madeleine suddenly screeched, waving her fork around defensively. At once, Erik strode over to her bed to gently take it from her. He had a bit of a hard time doing it; there was a brief tug-of-war while Mina and Morwenna cheered Erik on.

"Pirate!" she said, looking scared, pointing at Erik. "He's a pirate! He stole my lightsaber!"

Erik stood still, holding the fork and wondering why he was feeling slightly complimented at being called a pirate. Pirates were _bad._ Weren't they?

"It's a _fork_," said Mina. "How the hell do you know about lightsabers anyway?"

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," she murmured. Morwenna stepped around Mina to go over the bed, where she leaned over Madeleine, looking angry. Madeleine shrunk into her blankets with a meep, trying to get away from her vengeful aunt.

"You never put the Yeti down the drain," she whispered fearfully, eyes as large as saucer plates. Wow, what a lame simile that is.

"You really _are_ crazy," said Morwenna, trying to resist the urge to slap her niece.

"I'm quite sure they would say so," said Madeleine, causing a huge outrage amongst the phans for her daring, _daring_ to use that line.

"Dammit, I can't torture you in good conscience anymore." Morwenna looked pissed, crossed her arms, and huffed unhappily.

"We need the gear in the watch if we want to die," said Madeleine, clinging to her blankets as if she thought someone was going to stride in and pull them away from her, revealing her body and leaving her embarrassed in front of her family. Why, I don't know.

"She's batshit insane," Mina offered, grinning sheepishly when Erik turned to stare at her. "Well, she _is_."

"We should leave," said Erik, waiting for the women to exit first. They turned to stare at him, clearly not having any interest in listening to what he was saying.

"The shadow knows," Madeleine murmured, twisting her blankets around in her hands protectively.

"I'm not going to leave the two of you alone with her," he clarified. "Come," he ordered.

There was an awkward, but mostly annoyed, pause, and then both women reluctantly trudged out of the room.

"See you again next week," Madeleine called, waving cheerfully, "same freaky time, same freaky channel! You are the weakest link! Goodbye!"

Erik shut the door and they headed back out to the waiting room. When they got there, Nadir, Fred, and the Siren stood up respectfully and out of concern, the Siren still sucking on her lolly.

"Well?" Nadir asked carefully.

"She's _awesome_," said Mina proudly, flouncing over to the now broken coffee machine and repairing it with a tap of her wand, and also filling it with coffee, because she is just that talented. She poured herself a cup of the liquid and brandished it. The cup, that is, not the wand. "Coolest grandmother _ever_."

Nadir stared at her, then turned back to Erik. "What?"

"She's insane," Erik said, sounding slightly confused. "In the worst possible way. We cannot understand what she is trying to tell us."

"Who knows what those phans did to her," Fred put in disgustedly, thinking of . . . something. Something very unpleasant. For him, anyway, but not for the Author and That Other Author. Especially That Other Author. Stupid her, thinking he was in love with someone he wasn't. Well, she wasn't that stupid. He liked her. He just didn't like her stupid insistence of something that would never ever happen.

Never.

The Siren popped the lolly out of her mouth and waved it around like a wand. "Do you really think they meant to kill her?"

"Probably," said Morwenna, who'd sat down as soon as they'd returned to the waiting room, looking at a magazine. She flipped through it idly. "They hate her almost as much as I do."

"She's still awesome," said Mina, taking a dainty sip of her coffee. She was trying to appear ladylike - she failed.

"If you say so," said Morwenna. "But you're wrong. She's an evil, sadistic demon."

Mina threw her cup away. "So she's more like you than you want to admit."

Morwenna glared at her.

"Well," said Fred suddenly. "I've got things to do, places to be, see you all later." He headed out the door.

After a moment, Erik chased him. "Fred. Wait!"

"What?" he said, turning around and glaring at him.

"Where's Ayesha?"

"Who?"

"Ayesha. Where is she?"

Fred stared, trying to place the name. "Oh, your cat. I don't know."

"You don't have her?"

"Why would I have her?"

Erik flailed internally. "The Author said -"

Fred frowned at the mention of her.

"- that you had Ayesha. You were trying to conspire with her."

"I wasn't doing anything with her!" Fred protested.

". . . so you don't want the Siren dead?"

"Of course I do."

Erik was confused. "The Author said you wished for Ayesha to kill her."

Realization dawned on Fred. "Oh. I thought you meant -- never mind. Yeah, I was trying to convince her to go after the Siren. She wouldn't do it for some reason and then she left. I figured she'd have gone right to you." He shrugged.

Erik's heart sank. "All right."

"Sorry, man," said Fred, walking away as if he didn't really care. Which, truth be told, he didn't.

Erik sighed and returned to the others, who were now arguing heatedly over whether Madeleine was cool or not.

"You heard what she was saying," Mina said.

"She's still a selfish bitch," Morwenna protested.

Mina paused, nodded. "Well, she's cool _now_," she amended.

"No, she isn't," Morwenna said. "She's insane."

Mina crossed her arms. "Well, _I _think she's cool."

"I'll have to show you that she in fact isn't," Morwenna said, leaving the room.

"'Kay." Mina shrugged, trudging after her to see her so-called evidence.

Nadir, Erik, and the Siren stuck around the waiting room for the next few minutes, then quickly realized that nothing was going to happen, so they all left. It wasn't like Madeleine was going to miss them (meaning Erik in particular, since she had no idea that Nadir or the Siren even existed) and there was therefore not much point in staying.

"Bloop," said Madeleine, playing with a Cthulhu plushie.

**xxxxxx**

Upstairs, as soon as the group had disappeared below decks, the phans had jumped up and vaulted, literally vaulted, back over to their ship. Agent Lithium, who had been declared impromptu leader by the other phans for her daring action at attacking Madeleine with Erik standing five feet away, had some of the phans gather up the electronics now strewn about on deck, and forced the movie phans to clean up the gory remains of the phans that Max had literally torn apart.

Once that was done, they debated quickly on whether or not to stick around and see if:

1) Madeleine survived the vicious whip attack,

2) They were really forgiven by Erik or not, and

3) They could find out what the technicalities of the rule are about not being able to feed a Mogwai after midnight.

"I suppose we should give her back," said Phan #229, after the phans had gotten a headache from trying to think about time zones and all that.

"No way!" said another. "She can be used as leverage if we don't want Erik to kill us!"

"But did you _see _how upset he's become?" Phan #836 said. "It's not right to keep him away from her!"

"I don't care. Don't you think our lives are more important than a --"

"Shut up!" Lithium boomed, cracking her whip authoritatively and somehow managing to loom over them all despite her small size. "You all listen. Are you listening?"

When they nodded, she continued, "Look, you all know how this phic is supposed to end."

"I don't!" called a Random Phan.

"Seize that girl and, um, throw her out the airlock!" said the phan Lithium had recruited to be her accomplice, Phan #145. Everyone stared at her, giving her a look that said, essentially, WTF.

After a moment of staring back, but in a more docile and surprised way, she had the sense to flush with embarrassment. "I forgot we weren't on a spaceship," she muttered, and elected not to explain the weird and out-of-place outburst. She'd just be laughed at, anyway.

"Anyway," Lithium continued, again, after getting far out of the reach of Phan #145's progressive stupidity. "You know how this thing is going to end. And don't say you don't. I know you do. We're going to stick around see it first hand. It's going to be awesome."

The phans twittered.

"You mean she actually has an idea of how this thing is really actually going to end?"

"Yeah, I do," said the Authoress, suddenly perched on the support beam of a sail. She leaned forward. "I've got it all plotted out. Amazing, isn't it?"

The phans nodded.

She pointed at them, and they backed up a step or two cautiously. "Ya'll need to give Ayesha back."

"Why?" some of them whined.

"'Ya'll'?" some others wondered.

"Because, frankly, I'm getting sick of having to remember that little plot detail."

"Ah." The more writing-inclined phans of the bunch nodded their sympathy.

"And I want to hurry this phic up."

The phans looked sad.

"Oh, don't give me that look," said the Authoress, poofing away.

"You heard her!" said Lithium. "You." She pointed at Phan #145. "Go tell our super secret spy that she needs to give that cat back, stat."

"That'd be Supah Sekrit Spy," Phan #151 corrected.

"Whatever."

**xxxxxx**

By this time, because the Authoress is getting impatient with the sea voyage storyline, their ship was nearly all the way across the Atlantic, even if they didn't have the necessary power to actually get them across in that amount of time and this actually would have taken far longer than she says it did even if they had such power.

Besides, if they have iPods and coffee pots and stuff, there's no reason the ship can't move faster than it would normally. Right?

Anyway, the next couple of days passed by peacefully, Erik going to down to visit Madeleine and tolerate her newfound talent at saying things that didn't seem to make much, if any, sense.

"It isn't a good idea to sleep on nuclear powered generators," was one such thing she muttered. Erik tried not to actually answer these phrases, but sometimes they were so bizarre he couldn't really help it.

"I can now control the speed and direction of the rotating diner via these mounted binoculars!"

". . That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," said Erik a moment later, trying to figure that out. Never mind that she'd been saying incomprehensible things all day and the day before and the day before that, _and _he'd heard plenty of far more bizarre things in his day, but that wasn't the point. Point was, you _couldn't _control a rotating diner by mounted binoculars. That was just _silly_.

Another such incident went like this:

"My mind is a swirling miasma of scintillating thoughts and turgid ideas."

Erik couldn't help but agree. "Mine too."

And then there were those things that were utterly baffling. More so than what she'd already said.

"I haven't seen that much twine since that night in Tokyo in '68." Erik hadn't even known she'd been to Japan.

And, after that first visit, every time Erik would leave, Madeleine would give him an important safety tip.

"Buddy up for safety!" she'd call. "You don't want giant monkey men to come after you!"

The next day when Erik came to visit her, wondering what profound bit of universal knowledge she would give him today, he found that she wasn't alone in the room.

Amazingly enough, the Authoress had actually come up with a semi purpose for chapter nine, one that didn't actually match up with that was said and done, and this was it:

Carl the Friar and Remy-who-was-sekritly-Gambit were standing near the door, watching Gabriel-who-was-not-sekritly-Van-Helsing hold Madeleine's hand and proclaim his love to her.

"You must be Anna reincarnated," he told her, and launched into a disgusting myriad of love confessions. Madeleine stared at him blankly, not blinking once.

"Anna?" Madeleine asked.

Gabriel nodded.

"My name isn't Anna."

"Not anymore, it isn't," he said. "When you were reborn, you got a new name."

"Then how did Dracula know yours?" Carl mused.

"Shut up, Carl."

"My name isn't Anna," Madeleine repeated.

"It must be, for you are more beautiful than a thousand sunspots in the middle of winter, and she was - is - more lively than a thousand butterflies flapping in the wind (and eventually causing a tornado in Brazil through the wonder that is Chaos Theory). The similarity between you both is too obvious to be denied!"

Madeleine shook her head, and Gabriel sighed, the torment of a thousand emo kids managing to shine through. Madeleine shivered at all the pseudo-darkness headed her way.

". . ." said Erik, staring at the scene unfolding before him and wondering just how much damage he'd sustain if he tried to take these wackos in a fight.

"Not me!" Carl protested. "I don't want to fight you!"

"Remy knows he could not take Erik in a fight," Gambit agreed. Erik wondered how they could read his mind. Or the narration. In reply, they shrugged and continued watching Gabriel.

There turned out to be no need for such an intervention, for Gabriel clambered unsteadily to his feet and rushed out the door, pushing past Erik with the force of a thousand ladybugs.

In other words, Erik had the foresight to step aside and let the heartbroken vampire hunter pass by unhindered.

Carl hurried out after his pained friend and just gave Erik a confuzzled look as he exited. Remy followed quickly, whistling an upbeat lil tune to himself. Erik stared at the empty doorway for a moment before turning back to look at Madeleine. When he did so, he was surprised to see that she was positively beaming at him.

"Hullo, Erik!" she chirped happily, patting the bed in a place that wasn't occupied by any part of her body. "Would you like to sit down?"

A thousand different emotions pushed their way across Erik's face in less than five seconds, but Madeleine wasn't able to see this because of his mask.

Madeleine seemed perfectly lucid. That was incredibly odd. She was supposed to be insane. When he'd visited two hours ago, she'd given him a lecture about the hazards of playing with screwdrivers while in a moving race car.

Perhaps those two men had helped her somehow. Or the Authoress had come in and whacked her with a clue-by-four.

He sat down, awkwardly and watching Madeleine's face carefully for any hint of revulsion. There was none, and this puzzled Erik more than her sudden recovery from the depths of insanity.

She gave him a wide smile, then leaned over the opposite side of her bed to dig around in her suitcase, which she did have. No, the recovery of her suitcase from the phans will not be explained.

She pulled out a bit of cloth and handed it to Erik, beaming more than before. Erik took it gingerly between his forefinger and thumb and held it up carefully to examine, lest it be poisonous or explosive or something else intended to hurt him.

It was a sock.

Erik blinked and looked past it at Madeleine.

"Er," he said.

"It's a sock," she said. "For you." She looked down at her hands, the fingers of which she tapped together, a sign of nervousness.

". . . a sock," he said. What, was this supposed to be some sort of reconciliatory gift, an attempt at making things right between them? Was she actually trying to apologise? -- With a _sock, _of all things? After everything that had happened between them, this is what she decided to give to him as --

Erik suddenly wondered why the only two things she had ever given him were clothes. Rather odd, really. Weren't mothers supposed to give their children fun things? Like toys or magical powers or the means to get magical powers through flawed technology or something like that?

And why only one sock? That was kinda weird.

The sock was actually kind of cute, red and blue with cartoonish yellow bunnies on it, and you could actually sense the emotions she felt seep out from it. There was love, and sorrow, and a feeling of hopeful atonement. And, if you were careful and listened quietly, a hint of regret.

Madeleine looked up at the ceiling, avoiding Erik's stare of curiosity.

Erik dropped the sock. It was more out of sudden shock and joy than it was him rejecting the sock. Madeleine, though, took the action as meaning the latter and sighed, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

"Erik," she began quietly, staring down at her hands again, "I'm so sorry --"

"AYESHA!"

Her head snapped up to see Erik suddenly standing in the doorway and leaning out of it to look both ways.

"Mrow," said Ayesha, suddenly sitting at Madeleine's feet. The cat had her eyes narrowed and was glaring at Madeleine with the fury of a thousand nuclear explosions. Madeleine blinked back her tears.

"Ayesha!" Erik cooed, pulling the angry cat off the bed and cuddling her like a baby. "I was so worried about you!"

". . ." said Madeleine, mentally facepalming.

". . ." said Ayesha, forgetting all about Madeleine and beginning to purr. Erik headed toward the door, having also seemingly forgotten all about Madeleine.

"Let's go, honey," he said. "We'll get you some yummy tuna. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Mrr," said Ayesha amiably, pleased with herself at having successfully interrupted the reunion that would have quickly become sappy and painful to read. And also painful for the writer to write, as she knows full well she cannot write sappiness to save her life.

Instead, we'll leave you with this refreshing, if not completely edited, clip from an as yet unpublished fic to come, though the POV has been changed to protect the dimwitted:

_"GET HIM, GIRLS!" Meg roared, and the ballet rats all jumped the Rat Catcher, effectively pinning him under their small girlish bodies._

_He sighed. This really wasn't the best of days. _


	19. In America!

Today was the day. She knew it was. She could smell it in the water. She could smell it in the air. Hell, She could smell it in the _carpet_.

Today was the day that would mark the change of everything. And She was prepared. She had set up Her contacts, Her informants, all ready and willing to do Her bidding. Her army, set and prepared for taking over this foul human contraption and turning the tides of a millennia-old war.

She turned to Her lieutenant. "Are we all clear, then?"

"Yes, Your Grace." The lieutenant saluted Her. She responded accordingly, then turned to hurry across an open space that would become one of many battlefields the moment She gave Her word. She was eager to begin Her campaign, not only for a vendetta She held, but for avenging the millions of Her kin that had also perished at the merciless hands of The Enemy.

Unfortunately for Queen Musora the Forty Second, Her carefully laid plans of mice and men were not to come to fruition, for Ayesha leapt out of the shadows at that very moment, caught Musora in her paws, and snapped the rat's neck immediately, leaving the lieutenant staring wide-eyed and openmouthed at the cat. He fled immediately when Ayesha hissed in his direction and, later, took every rat aboard the ship to the deck, where they commited ritual suicide by drowning themselves.

Ayesha disemboweled the rodent quickly, then licked her paws clean before trotting off to meet up with Erik.

Erik, the Siren, and Nadir currently stood on the bow of the ship, looking at New York's port through binoculars.

"America!" said the Siren.

"America!" said Nadir.

"It's just a severed colony," Erik muttered.

"Shush!" they both told him.

Erik grumbled unhappily to himself as the ship continued on its seemingly doomed path to the docks that couldn't end in anything but a collision.

That was how it seemed to the passengers who were on the deck, anyway. They couldn't help but have flashbacks to the Titanic (the historic tragedy, not the 1997 romantic movie with David Warner and Kate Winslet) even though the Titanic tragedy was actually to occur some years in their future.

As the ship continued on the path its passengers felt was going to end in Doom, Erik tried again.

"Let's not go to America," he suggested. "It is a silly place."

"Are you kidding?" the Siren and Nadir exclaimed together.

"Broadway!" said Nadir.

"FAO Schwarz!" said the Siren.

"Nevada!" said Nadir, branching out a bit.

"North Dakota!" said the Siren, continuing with that train of thought.

"Cleveland!" said Nadir.

"LOS ANGELES!" the Siren exclaimed with much more enthusiasm than she'd intended to use. She didn't let the accidental mashing phase her, however, and merely grinned when her two male companions gave her curious looks.

They wisely decided not to question the motivation behind the outburst, and turned again toward the bay just in time to see the ship nearly crash into the dock.

"We're heeeeere!" came the announcement from over the PA system, and Erik had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as the intercom, which had been left on, relayed the sounds of a struggle from inside the office as the Captain regained control.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the new voice began, wholly opposite from its predecessor as this one was older and male, "we have arrived in Manhattan. Disembarking will begin shortly."

The Siren clapped her hands together and hopped up and down with glee. "Oh, this is going to be wonderful!" she gushed.

Five miles away and to the northeast, another ship sat still in the water as its crew continued to mop the deck clean of blood. Agent Lithium prowled around, muttering to herself.

"Not fair, not fair, not FAIR!" she complained. "We weren't supposed to lose this many people, were we?"

The phans who weren't doing menial work shook their heads.

"And to lose Tenacious D - that's a heavy blow to our side."

"Why are there dead rats in the water?" a phan commented randomly, leaning over the side of the ship. This question was asked between bursts of puking, as she tended to get seasick.

"Well," said Lithium a few moments later. "Who wants to go watch Pan's Labyrinth while we figure out a new plan?"

Most of the phans' hands shot into the air and they trooped off belowdecks to enjoy the movie.

Back over at the dock, Erik and Posse clambered off the ship noisily and found themselves positively overjoyed to be back on solid land. Madame Giry and Meg even went so far as to plop themselves down and pat the ground fondly.

The Siren laughed at the landlubbers. "I was born in water," she said. "It's my natural habitat."

"Good for you," Nadir muttered from where he was face down and sniffing the dirt.

Behind them, Fred glanced around the area critically. "I've seen better," he declared. He looked around for his Luggage and, once he'd spotted it and had it back in his possession, began walking off in the direction of Cleveland. Everyone waved g'bye to him. He gave them a cursory reply wave, then didn't glance behind again.

Up on deck, Morwenna was having a hard time with her luggage. This could have been due to the fact that there were at least fifteen suitcases that she had to deal with. Mina, who merely had a backpack, raised an eyebrow at her great-aunt's antics.

"Why don't you simply use a spell?" she wondered.

"Too easy!" Morwenna declared.

"All right, fine," said Mina, leaving her aunt behind as she headed over to the ramp to join the others. "Good luck, then."

Erik was busy looking around warily. "I swear, if I see one _hint _of a clown around here --"

"You won't," Mina answered. "When the city heard you were coming, they declared clowning around to be illegal."

"Oh. Good."

"Miming's still free game, though."

"Damn."

"I know," she agreed. "Any of you know if there's a spacial bar around here? I could really do with a Milliways drink right about now."

"Um," said the Siren, going into deep thought and calling upon her freaky Sireny knowledge. "I think there's one at the corner of Reed and Pan."

"Wonderful," Mina said. "I _really _need a drink, so I'll see you all later."

"Bye, Mina!" Everyone waved at her, too.

Then they all received a huge shock (literally) when Morwenna collapsed nearby, gasping.

"I . . . am NEVER . . . bringing this much stuff with me . . . EVER AGAIN."

Nadir rushed to her assistance, while Erik stared.

"Why bring anything at all?"

"Materialism, dear boy," Morwenna answered, nearly crushing Nadir as she leaned on him for support.

"Can't. Breathe," Nadir said through gritted teeth, feeling his knees lock up as he struggled to remain upright.

"I suppose we ought to get moving," Erik said, though what he really would have preferred to do was get back on the ship and go back to France and give wooing Christine another go.

He knew right away that this option was pointless to attempt, and not just because his group would drag him back here. It was also pointless because the phans' ship had just drifted into the bay.

". . . Oh, God," said Erik, as Morwenna's weight overpowered Nadir, and his knees buckled. The ground shook a bit.

"Why, hello there." Morwenna grinned at him. Nadir felt sick.

"Madame -" he began.

"Mam'selle," she corrected.

". . ." said Nadir in response. "Would you be so kind as to let me up?"

She frowned, but did as he asked.

"Hey!" said the Siren. "The phans are here! Hi guys!" She began waving at the ship, as Erik stared at her in disbelief.

"Whose side are you _on_?" he demanded.

"Side?" said the Siren in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Are you with us -" Erik pointed at himself with one hand and gestured around with the other at Nadir, Madame Giry, Meg, Morwenna, and Madeleine and Ayesha, who were both in actuality there with them, "or with _them_?" and he used both hands to wave toward the ship.

The Siren furrowed her brow in concentration. "Can't I be with all of you?"

"No!"

"Oh. In that case, you. Of course."

"Good. I'm glad to hear that."

Ayesha wasn't. She was still pissed over what had happened earlier in the fic. Stupid Siren, daring to say aloud her innermost secrets. Why, she should never have let the Siren know what they were in the first place. In fact, what she knew she ought to do now was to --

"We should probably get out of here," said Nadir, unintentionally cutting off Ayesha's internal monologue. The group looked back at the phans' ship, which was looming closer every second, and promptly decided that yeah, that was probably a good idea.

After the group had made sure that every member of their group was accounted for, including Madeleine, which, yes, meant that they took her with them, they escaped into the city.

**xxxx**

Mina glanced around the bar cautiously, and hoped that she wouldn't get busted for underage drinking. Maybe if she acted inconspicuous enough, no one would think about asking her any questions.

And since this was New York's top multiversal bar, and what with Erik being here and all, there were likely to be phans around. And if they recognized her, she would be outed as a Mary Sue right away.

She didn't want that.

Even if she would deny her Sueism.

So she took a seat at the counter and hoped against hope she wouldn't stand out. Unfortunately for her, and because the Authoress is in a really foul mood, the bartender just happened to be a phan. A Leroux purist, as a matter of fact.

"G'day," said bartender greeted, wiping down the counter in typical bartender fashion.

"Martini," Mina requested.

"Kind?"

"Whatever you've got."

"Right," said the bartender. She turned around to grab a bottle of vodka, and, when she was reasonably sure Mina wasn't looking, a small bottle from her pocket. She quickly poured the liquid into the glass, then added in the vodka and the other ingredients that make for a good martini. With a flourish, she presented it to Mina, who looked up from where she was typing a quick message into her Blackberry.

"Thanks," Mina said, taking the drink. She sipped it, then looked into it, eyeballing the liquid within. "Why does it smell like almonds?"

"Oh," said the bartender, scrambling for an excuse. "We use . . . almond juice."

"Almond juice." Mina raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah. All our customers seem to love it."

Mina looked back down at the glass, shrugged, and threw back her head and drank the rest in one gulp. The bartender grinned viciously and quickly changed her expression to impassive when Mina glanced her way, holding out her glass for a refill.

The bartender took it and filled it once more with the drug she'd previously slipped into it. She had to be careful, though, she didn't want to kill Mina - she only wanted to keep her captive. When she finished filling it with the alcohol, she handed back the glass and went to serve a couple other customers.

Mina tapped her fingers on the countertop as she drank. She was glad she hadn't been accosted; she should have realized that in a spacial bar such as this, there were bound to be others like herself, those who came here for a moment of peace. To feel at home in an unfamiliar world.

That was the point of these places, after all. And as such, Mina now thought to herself, she needn't really have worried about someone refusing her because of her age.

It was twenty minutes and three drinks later that she slowly began to realize she'd been drugged. By a group of pissed off phans, no less, though she hadn't yet figured that part out.

"Damn it," she muttered as her vision began to spin (which she knew wasn't from the drinks - like any Sue worth her glitter, she had a high tolerance for alcohol) and she thought she saw dancing ants doing the can-can across the counter, complete with canes and top hats. She looked up and saw that the bartender had mysteriously turned into an alien species that Mina thought she recognized, due to spending an unhealthy amount of time in the Authoress's head.

"What the hell," Mina muttered thickly, before losing consciousness and hitting her head rather sharply upon the countertop. The bartender, who'd seemingly returned to being human, and a couple phans who had emerged from the shadows gathered around the body, staring down in disgust.

"What now?" one of them asked.

"Now," said another, "we take her to see the head of the Order."

"Of the Phoenix?"

"Not that Order."

"Oh. Right. Sorry."

**xxx**

Madeleine had disappeared. She was gone. Kaput. No one in the group could figure out exactly when, but they knew it must have happened somewhere between Bleeker and ninth.

Two streets down, where 11th and Bleeker intersected, Madeleine found herself being forced along by a couple more phans. As they passed an antique store that occupied the space at the corner, they (the phans) whipped out cameras and took pictures of the sign.

"OMG!" one of them said, literally giving the three letters a sound that seemed like an actual word. "It really exists!"

"Of _course _it exists, you knucklehead!"

"Not in _our _Universe, it doesn't."

One of the phans smacked the other upside the head. "And our Universe isn't some weird mashup of a bunch of continuums either, is it?"

". . . No."

The phan looked at the building again. "This fic we're in sucks."

Madeleine remained silent, not understanding a word that the girls were saying. She didn't have to remain confused for very long, because they soon got over whatever problem they had and continued forcing her to go somewhere she didn't want to go. After she'd just been reunited with Erik, too.

This, indeed, sucked.


	20. The End of the Ghost's Weird Story

Erik and (Remaining) Company entered the nearest (expensive) hotel and looked around. Immediately, a manager bustled up to them.

"Welcome, welcome!" he gushed. "We've been waiting for you, yes, we have. We're quite eager to have you here."

Erik ignored him, choosing instead to glance around the beautiful lobby. This left Nadir to take care of the arrangements, which he did with only a small amount of resentment.

"You have quite an . . . unusual group," the manager commented, looking behind him toward Erik and the Siren and Morwenna and Madame Giry (who was fondling her cane just a little too much).

"Don't say that too loudly," Nadir advised, "or they'll kill you."

The manager shut up straight away.

Everyone except Madame Giry and Meg had their own rooms, all of them paid for by a credit card they'd picked up after the Authoress had whooshed away suddenly. It hadn't yet been reported lost or stolen, though even if it had, it wouldn't have mattered so much yet, since they were in an entirely different world. That didn't explain why the card worked, or even why the hotel accepted it in the first place since this is before the 20th century, but they didn't question it. To question it would cause problems.

After smoothing that out, and Erik making sure Madeleine had a room waiting for her when they found her, they all trooped upstairs to make themselves at home. As they passed the thirteenth floor, every door on that floor opened at once, allowing a multitude of female heads to peek out.

"There's been a disturbance in the Force," they said.

Passing the fourteenth, the same thing happened, except that the women said something different.

"OMG!" they shouted. "I felt Erik pass by!"

And then they danced in the hallway.

The group reached the seventeenth floor, and spilled out into the hallway to get to their rooms.

In Erik's room, Ayesha prowled around, checking everything and making sure the room was suited just right to her taste.

Erik, who didn't have much in the way of material possessions here, dropped his single suitcase on the bed and sat in a chair by the table near the window.

In the next room over, the Siren danced around as she dropped her own duffel bag on the floor by the door, since it was dripping wet.

Nadir took a nap.

Morwenna shoved her bags into the closet and when there proved to be too many for it, dumped the rest under the window, moving her own table out of the way.

**xxx**

Two hours later, they all (minus Ayesha, who was left at home _again_) headed out once more to stop in at a restaurant for some food. They'd been sitting at the table, happily eating and theorizing about what they were going to do now, when a cold wind suddenly blew through the restaurant, causing everyone to stop eating and look toward the front doors. No one noticed, but the Siren ducked under the table.

Standing in the doorway was a teen girl, armed to the teeth with weapons. Everyone was shocked and scared and tried to look non-threatening.

"I know you're here," the girl announced, looking around the room thoroughly. "You can't escape." She began to make her way through the room, passing each table and giving each person sitting at them a good look before moving on.

She paused at Erik's table and peered at them all.

"I know you," she said, pointing at Erik's mask. "And I know what you're going to become."

"Er," said Erik. "And what might that be?"

"And spoil the surprise?" said the girl. "I think not."

She continued on, causing everyone at Erik's table to breath a sigh of relief. Finally, she stopped by a table that had four men in trenchcoats sitting there, and whipped the hat off one of them. The bald head that was revealed was green, and Raphael was pissed.

"Sorry." She set the hat back on his head, surreptitiously patted that head, and continued on. Raphael, oddly enough, didn't try to pick a fight but instead went back to his food. His brothers looked on with surprise.

The girl also passed the main four Seinfeld friends, the Mario Brothers and their princesses, and the Ghostbusters, before stopping at a table where a lone man sat, drowning his sorrows in a beer.

"You," said the girl, and the man looked up.

"You!" he said in response, and got to his feet, towering over her. "You've got my boy!"

"Michael Dawson," said the girl. "You've been charged with two murders, endangering four people, and generally being really stupid."

"Walt!" he shouted. "I want my boy back!"

"You'll see him," the girl said airily. "You'll see him. Come with me." And from the way she held the gun she was holding, Michael was in no position to argue. They headed toward the restaurant's front, but before leaving the girl turned back.

"Sorry to disrupt your meal," she said. "Have fun finishing your fancy food."

And they were gone.

Erik and his people looked at each other in bewilderment, and the Siren poked her head back up before climbing into her chair.

"Whew," she said.

"Why'd you hide?" Meg wanted to know.

The Siren gestured at the door. "I've had run-ins with her," she said. "I don't wanna get caught again. It's not fun."

They all had to agree that having to go with that girl, whoever she was, didn't look like fun, and they went back to their food.

When they were finished, they all stepped outside onto the street, and looked at each other.

"I've got to find my mother," Erik said. "I won't leave her to those . . . things."

"I'm goin' home!" Madame Giry declared, then turned to Meg. "C'mon, we're going."

They left, because Meg knew it wouldn't be wise to let her mother go alone, in the state she was in.

That left Erik, the Siren, Nadir, Darius, and Morwenna. Nadir let Darius return to the hotel as well, which narrowed the group down to four. It was further narrowed down to three when Morwenna burped, realized she was still hungry, and went back into the restaurant for seconds.

The remaining three set off down the street determinedly, even if the Siren and Nadir couldn't really figure out Erik's motivation for finding Madeleine.

**xxx**

Mina woke up slowly, feeling unusually groggy and lightheaded. Or was that thickheaded? She could never remember which was which. Not that that ever stopped her, really. She knew what she felt like, even if she couldn't eloquently describe it. She felt like crap. Old crap. Old crap that had been sitting outside for sometime and had been exposed to the elements. That's what she felt like. Only, a thousand times worse. Yeah, that was about right.

And she was tied to chair. Pretty tightly, too, she realized, testing the ropes. Her hands were tied together behind the chair, and her arms were tied to the chair, and her feet were tied to separate legs of the chair.

Yup. They'd been thorough in making sure she couldn't easily escape.

She heard voices muttering in the darkness, and sat still so she could hear them. If there was one thing she'd learned from watching suspense flicks, it was to pretend to stay unconscious as long as possible instead of making your sudden wakefulness known immediately.

"What are we going to do with her?" a voice whispered. "If she wakes up, we're screwed."

"No, we're not," said another voice. "She can't hurt us - we're phans. Real people. She's fictional."

Someone snorted. "That didn't stop her from taking my hand off a couple years ago."

"You shut up," came the near unanimous response.

"She's a Mary Sue," said yet another person, "and we have to take her out."

"I dunno," someone else protested feebly, "I kinda like her."

"Mary Sue sympathizer!" came the expected response, and Mina could hear the sound of something hitting the floor. She tried not to wince - it sounded like they'd killed whoever that was.

She was in some real deep trouble. If she'd been captured by the phans . . . well. That really wasn't good. She tried to remember how she'd gotten into this mess, but her memory was fuzzy.

"I say we just kill her!" someone said, and, though Mina couldn't see her, she wielded a knife with a bloodthirsty look in her eye.

"No," someone else said, the one who had identified the group as being phans. "We're gonna make it hurt."

"Yeah yeah yeah!" someone else crowed, bouncing. Literally bouncing. Mina could hear her weight hitting the floor again and again.

Mina also heard something snap, and knew right away what it was.

"Her wand is now useless," said the phan who'd done the above action, and threw the pieces at Mina's feet. "She can't hurt us with magic now."

She stared down at the two bits of broken wood sitting uselessly at her feet. And then something within herself snapped, and she raised her head to stare into the darkness surrounding her.

"She's awake," came the resultant whispers.

Mina already knew she didn't stand much of a chance, but still tried to get herself free of the chair. "You broke my wand!" she shouted, rocking in the chair. "Phans or not, you are going _down_! I'll make sure of it! Kidnapping me was one thing, _drugging_ me was one thing, but breaking my _wand_? Yeah, I'm _pissed_ now!"

One of the phans stepped forward, stared coldly down at her, and then whacked her a good one.

"Ow," Mina said, hanging her head. The phan kneeled down in front of her, but far enough away that Mina couldn't even attempt to hurt her somehow, despite being securely tied up.

"You're a Mary Sue," said the phan. "We're doing Erik a favor. We'd go after that floozy he's hanging out with - out of character hanging out with, I might add - but she's got a canonical basis, unfortunately." The phan grinned. "You, however, don't. And neither does that 'aunt' of yours."

"Morwenna?" Mina asked unnecessarily. "She'll kick your ass!"

"Not if we take her out first." The phan held up a knife. Mina narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth to say something, when a thump was heard from the darkness beyond, where the other phans were standing silently, watching.

They turned to look at what had happened to one of their own, then a couple screamed as some more thumps could be heard.

The phan with Mina stood up, knife at the ready, but didn't stand a chance, because something, Mina didn't see what, flew out from the dark and hit the phan in the head. She crumpled to the floor, and Mina laughed at her before realizing that maybe drawing attention to her own self might not be the best plan.

A man wearing a suit stepped forward, and he and Mina stared at each other for a minute. She was surprised to see that he wore a suit and a fedora. He, in turn, was surprised to see her. Not because he knew her or anything, but because it seemed kind of odd for a bunch of teenage girls to have another teenage girl who looked them tied up the way they had.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"Who are you?" he asked, at the same moment.

"Lamont Cranston," said the man almost an instant later, bowing. "And you are?"

"Mina."

"Just Mina?"

"Yes."

"Hmm," he said. "And why, exactly, were those other girls holding you like this?"

She eyeballed him, wondering just why he'd saved her. "It's a long story."

He crossed his arms and watched her. "I daresay you've got ample time."

So she told him. It wasn't like she had much of a choice. She left out certain things, of course, such as her Sueism, and exactly who her dad was and the circumstances of her existence. In short, she made it sound like the phans were just jealous of her.

Lamont took off his hat and scratched his head. "Your dad's looking for a job, huh?"

"That's right," she said. "Mind untying me?"

He replaced his hat and did just that.

"If you need to relax," Lamont said graciously, "you're welcome to come to my house and have something to drink."

Mina rubbed her wrists and looked down at her broken wand. And considered. If this guy wanted to hurt her, he'd just given up the perfect chance to. Plus, she was rather thirsty. So she scooped up her wand and shoved them into her jeans pocket, then looked up at him.

"Yeah, okay," she said.

"Wonderful," he said. "My chauffeur is waiting outside."

They left the warehouse, for that's what it was, and came face to door with a cab.

"That's your chauffeur?" she said pointedly.

"Hey," said the taxi driver. "Don't knock it." He patted the dashboard. "She's a smooth ride."

Mina shrugged; she'd seen weirder. So she climbed in after this Lamont guy and the taxi sped off down the street.

**xxx**

They hadn't found Madeleine. Not that they had really expected to, but it was disappointing all the same.

When they'd actually stopped to pay attention to where they were, they realized that they'd unintentionally gotten themselves lost.

"Great," said Nadir. "Now I'm going to miss my appointment."

"What for?" asked the ever curious Siren.

He mumbled something.

"What?"

"For a massage."

"Oh. Cool." She paused. "Hey, think I can get one, too?"

"No," Nadir lied. "They're very exclusive."

"Aww," said the Siren and looked at Erik, who was pacing the road in front of them. "Erik," she said. "I'm sure she's okay."

"Doesn't explain why she'd just disappear like that," he pointed out, then stopped in the middle of the street. "Unless she decided she didn't really want to be around me after all." He began muttering to himself.

The Siren and Nadir looked at each other helplessly, then around the street.

"What do we do?" the Siren asked. In reply, Nadir shrugged.

They stood there for another five minutes before Nadir had an idea.

"Erik," he said. "Maybe we should ask your phans to keep an eye out for her instead."

"No!" came the reply. "They'll kill her if they get their hands on her! You saw what happened back on the ship!"

The Siren nodded. "If it weren't for Sam and Max," she said, in an oddly sensible way, "they would have killed her."

Nadir looked defeated. "Well," he said then, "I'm just going to go make my appointment now, okay? I'll meet you back at the hotel."

He trudged away, causing the group to dwindle to two.

The Siren tried to think of some excuse that could get her out of there, too, but couldn't. Plus, she thought, it wouldn't have been right to leave Erik like this. Even if Nadir and Morwenna and the Girys had.

So she stayed there, watching him pace, unable to think of anything to say that might help.

_At this point, the Authoress had written herself into quite the tight little corner, and so she decided to drop a Deus Ex Machina into the story._

_Literally._

The taxi cab that Mina just happened to speed by on the opposite side of the street, and when Mina realized who they'd passed, she had the driver stop the car a short distance ahead, and she leaned out the door.

"Hey, Dad!" she called. "Siren! Come with us!"

Lamont climbed out of the cab and moved to the front passenger side, allowing the Siren and Erik room to follow Mina into the car.

"What are you doing here?" Mina asked.

"We were looking for Madeleine," the Siren answered, since Erik didn't show any inclination of answering. "What are you doing here?"

"I was captured by the phans," Mina said airily, then gestured to the man in the front passenger seat. "This is Lamont Cranston. He saved me from them."

"Hi!" said the Siren. Lamont just stared at her.

"Uh," he said quietly to Mina, "you do realize your friend is some sort of fish, do you not?"

She nodded. "This is my Aunt Siren," she said.

"I have a feeling that you haven't been entirely truthful," Lamont said.

Moe, the cab's driver, kept looking in his rearview mirror at the Siren. Not because he thought she was some sort of freaky fish thing.

"I told you what you needed to know," Mina said, then introduced Erik. Erik was supremely uncomfortable with this entire situation, and was relieved when the cab stopped in front of a mansion and they were all able to climb out and stretch.

"Welcome to my home," Lamont said graciously. They all trooped inside, where he invited them to sit in the sitting room while Moe went to go get them all refreshments.

Ten minutes later, they were all sitting in the sitting room, drinking tea and talking. Mina, Erik, and the Siren sat next to each other on the couch, Moe in the closet chair on the Siren's side, and Lamont sat in the chair directly across from the couch.

"So," Lamont began, setting his teacup down on the table in front of him. "Your daughter tells me you are looking for a job?"

Erik glanced quickly at Mina, who tried to look innocent but failed, before meeting Lamont's eyes. "Yes," he said shortly. "I am."

Lamont leaned forward. "Is it true that you are the infamous Phantom that lurked about in the Opera Garnier a couple years ago?"

Erik shot Mina another look, but this time she looked as confused as he felt.

"I didn't tell him that," she protested.

"No," Lamont confirmed. "I have my sources." He looked pleased with himself. "I will take that as a yes. I have a proposal for you," he said suddenly, causing them all to eye him suspiciously.

"What's that?" Erik asked.

"I am going to go abroad," Lamont said. "See the world. I don't ever plan to return here. What I would like to know is, if you are truly in need of employment, would you care to take over my job?"

"What's that?" Erik said again. Lamont grinned.

"I expect you'll be able to fill my shoes rather nicely," he said. "In short, I fight crime. I make New York safe for its denizens."

"Dun dun dun," said Moe, aside. The Siren laughed.

Lamont looked at Erik. "You've heard of The Shadow?"

Mina gaped. "No _way_!"

"No," said Erik.

Lamont immediately deflated. "Well, I'm him," he said. "And he's me. A superhero, of sorts. Or rather, I was. Now I'm offering you the post."

"If I do this, I have to save people," Erik said, putting emphasis on the last two words.

Lamont nodded.

"Then no."

"What?" Mina cried. "No! You have to!"

"There'd be lots of action," Lamont said hopefully. "You'd never be bored. And," he added, gesturing to Erik's clothes, "you're already dressed for the part."

That stopped him. "What?"

Mina facepalmed. "I should've known."

"Yes," Lamont said. "No one can know you're The Shadow. Except, of course," he added, gesturing to Mina and the Siren, "your family and closest friends."

Erik considered this.

"You can have the house and everything in it," Lamont continued. "I have a sizable fortune. I would only be taking a fraction of it with me."

Well, that did it. "All right," said Erik. "You've got a deal."

"Wonderful!" Lamont beamed and stepped forward, offering his hand.

They shook on it, effectively closing the deal.

**xxx**

A week later, everything was settled, and Mina and Morwenna were preparing to go back to their own Universe. Madame Giry and Meg looked around the mansion appreciatively. Well, Meg did. Madame Giry immediately saw several things wrong with it.

"Look at this!" she screeched. "There is a layer of dust on everything! Meg! We have work to do!"

"Yay," said Meg wearily.

In the dining room, Nadir sat at the table, reading a newspaper and circling several job opportunities he saw. He'd been offered the job of being Erik's chauffeur, but turned it down not only because Moe had been standing right there, but because he had something else in mind.

He was going to become a chef.

Out behind the house, the Siren floated lazily in the pool and grinned. "I knew it was a good idea to come to New York," she said to no one in particular.

Upstairs, Erik was digging through Lamont's closet, choosing what to keep and what to throw away. Mina walked through the doorway and grinned as he tried on the cape.

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" she quoted.

"The Shadow knows," Erik said, and swished his new cape.


	21. Deleted Scenes!

Right. Deleted Scenes, from the Stupid but Hopefully Hilarious Phic, Erik is Fired!

**From chapter eight:**

The Siren hugged her polar bear happily, giving a squeak of surprise when the bear was suddenly snatched out of her arms. No one else noticed. She turned to see Morwenna and Mina standing there, grinning. Morwenna handed the bear back and motioned her to follow them behind a dunking booth.

"What are you two doing here?" asked the Siren. "The space-time continuum –"

"The Bermuda Triangle," said Morwenna, as if that was explanation enough. It was. Morwenna and the Bermuda Triangle have a weird relationship.

The Siren nodded. "How's the other me?"

"Happy, as usual," said Mina. She opened her backpack and dug around in it, soon withdrawing her hand and holding it out to the Siren. Her hand held a microphone.

"What's that?" asked the Siren, and, after setting her bear down, took the microphone to study it curiously.

"A magical microphone. As long as you hold that to your mouth, you can sing all you want and not kill anyone."

The Siren's largish anime eyes grew three times bigger than they had been, and took on a shiny look. "Really?"

"As long as you're careful with it," said Mina. "Meaning, don't try any Mary-Sue-like tricks on Dad."

The Siren's skin suddenly lost its vibrant blue colour, becoming a dull blueish colour. Meaning, she paled. Considerably. "No way!"

"Good," both magic users said as the Siren tested it out, being careful enough to not be _too _loud. Just in case.

During her testing, she attracted a crowd. When she was done, the very large crowd clapped, then dispersed. At her feet was a large pile of money. The Siren smacked her hands together happily.

"Awright! Now I can play all the fair games!" She glanced around, then pointed to a vendor. "You!"

The vendor looked up. "Who, me?"

"Yeah! Gimme that backpack!"

He tossed it over, and the Siren began loading her newfound wealth into it.

"Thirty francs, please!" he called.

"Here ya go." The Siren threw the money at him.

"Hey!"

"Sorry!" When the Siren was done, she tucked her microphone away in the bottom of her new backpack and came bounding back over to them, where she picked up her bear.

"Let's go watch Erik win that contest, shall we?" said Morwenna, wanting to see her grand-nephew in action. So off they went.

And, of course, Erik won. As if anyone else stood a chance.

**- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -**

**From chapter two:**

The alarm went off.

"I'll get it!" the Siren shouted happily as she bounded towards the door. Erik had to grab her arm and pull her back in order to get ahead. He opened the door.

He, Nadir, Darius, the Siren, Madame Giry, and Meg all peeked out.

"Whoa," said Erik.

"Man, you're _popular_!" said the Siren.

"She swore she wouldn't come back here," said Meg, then, looking up at Erik, apologized. "Sorry. But she did."

"I know," muttered Erik.

"What's she doing here?" asked Nadir. "I'd have thought -"

"Don't say it," muttered Erik sourly. "Perhaps she's come to -"

"Have cake!" the Siren interrupted. "I had it once, when I was a small hatchling, and it was the most delicious thing I've ever tasted!" She looked down at Erik. "Will you make some before we have to leave? Please?!"

"We?" asked Erik.

"I'm coming with you!" said the Siren. "I couldn't serve any other Opera Ghost!" She beamed.

Erik was touched. "Why . . . thank you."

"You're welcome!" beamed the Siren.

"What kind of cake would you like?"

"Chocolate with chocolate chip frosting!"

"I shall make some especially for you later."

"Yay!"

"She's almost here," Nadir hissed. As one, the six of them pulled their heads back inside and shut the door.

A few moments later, the timid knock of Christine resounded on the door.

"We shouldn't even be here," came Raoul's voice from outside. "If he really has been sacked -"

"Why, that little-" Erik began as Nadir kicked his foot.

"We should get away from here as soon as possible."

"But don't you see, Raoul, if he _is_ fired, there's going to be nothing left for him to hang onto. I have to at least let him down gently. Perhaps that Persian friend of his will be able to help him out . . ."

Nadir grinned, and Erik kicked his foot.

"But what if he decides that nothing is worth it anymore and kidnaps you again, but refuses to let you go this time?"

"I told you, Raoul, he wouldn't _do_ that."

Nadir shot Erik a meaningful glance. Erik stuck his tongue out.

"He's a madman, Christine! Come, we're leaving!"

"No, Raoul! I have to say goodbye!" Christine began pounding on the door. "Erik! I know you're in there! The managers told me they're getting a new Opera Ghost and you have to move out! Let me in!"

"Wow," whispered Erik. "I didn't realize she had that kind of strength."

He stood up and looked at the Siren. She nodded and disappeared into the Louis-Philippe room. Madame Giry and Meg followed her. Darius disappeared into Erik's room.

Madame Giry stopped at the doorway and looked back at Erik.

"Be strong," she said, and disappeared inside.

Erik unlocked the door, and Christine fell in, face first. He helped her in, shot a look at Raoul, and shut the door in his face.

Raoul began beating on the door and yelling.

"They kicked you out!" said Christine angrily. "They actually dared fire _you_! You're the best Ghost this Opera shall ever know, I'll bet!" She stopped for a breath, then looked up at him. "You should have just killed them!"

Erik grinned. "That's what I told them, my dear."

"You caused this place so many scares!" Christine went on. "Why, I don't think Meg and Jammes will ever believe that you're gone! And Madame Giry has vowed to not participate in the money-gathering 'scheme' of the new Ghost. She's furious about it!"

Nadir couldn't believe his ears; this didn't sound like timid little girl that they knew.

Christine nodded at Nadir. "And that creepy spooky guy you don't like, he's pretty ticked too. Says that he'll forever haunt this place in your place, Erik, and will make the new Ghost a failure." Her nose suddenly twitched and she stopped and looked around, brow furrowed.

"What's that smell?"

"What smell?" Erik and Nadir both asked.

"It smells like . . . seaweed," said Christine.

"I don't smell anything," lied Erik. Nadir and Christine looked at him. "Just because I don't have a nose doesn't mean I can't smell!"

"I don't smell anything either," Nadir fibbed. "Except for the constant stench of death."

Erik glared at him for the jab as Christine shrugged. "All right," she said. "I just stopped by to make sure you were all right," she continued, spotting that the Louis-Philippe door was open by a couple inches. A sound similar to giggling floated out from it. Christine walked towards the door, noticing that the seaweed scent was getting stronger.

In a flash, Erik and Nadir were there in front of the door, blocking it so that Christine couldn't see inside.

"I'm fine," Erik lied. "Nadir's going to help me figure things out. Right, Nadir?"

Nadir nodded furiously. "Yep. We already have some ideas for where he'll live."

Christine looked suspiciously at them. "Who's that in there?"

"No one!" Erik and Nadir said quickly.

Christine crossed her arms and glared. Ooh, spooky. "Someone's in there and I want to know who."

Nadir and Erik exchanged glances, sighed, and moved away from the door. Christine moved in stealthily.

The only person she saw in the room was Ayesha, playing with a cat toy on the bed.

Christine looked back at Erik and Nadir. "Why were you trying to hide your cat, Erik?"

Erik and Nadir looked at each other in surprise.

"She's sick!" said Nadir quickly.

"With a very bad flu. We don't want you to risk catching it," Erik added. The silly-sounding lie seemed to work, for Christine walked out of the room, seemingly satisfied.

The two men shot a quick glance back into the room to see the Siren walk out of the bathroom with a sopping wet towel on her head. Madame Giry and Meg poked their heads out from under the bed. The Siren grinned at them, and all three waved.

With a sigh of relief, Erik shut the door.

The three of them stood in silence, staring at each other, before Nadir finally broke the silence.

"You should probably be going, Christine," said Nadir meaningfully. "Erik and I have a lot of work to do before he has to leave, and it sounds to me as though the Vicomte is losing his voice."

"Yes, right," said Christine, walking towards the door. "I just had to come make sure you were okay, Erik."

Erik nodded. "Thank you." He walked over to the door and moved to release the spring, then looked down at Christine.

"I hope you'll be happy with him," said Erik softly, flicking the spring.

The door swung open, and Raoul stared into the house, too shocked for words.

Christine nodded and stepped out. "Goodbye, Erik."

Raoul looked at her, then to Erik, then back at her.

Christine got into the boat and sat down. "Coming, Raoul?"

Raoul finally came to his senses and hurried after her. As the boat began to move away, Christine looked back and waved.

Erik slowly lifted his own hand in reply and didn't lower it, even after the two had been long gone.

Nadir, the Siren, Darius, Madame Giry, and Meg stepped up behind him.

"Can we make cake now?" asked the Siren carefully. Nadir shot her a look. "Sorry."

"Erik," said Nadir, "we need to begin packing your things."

There were a few minutes of silence, then Erik turned back around.

"Well, let's begin, shall we?" he said, forcing his voice to be cheery.

Nadir and Madame Giry exchanged glances, then took hold of his arms.

"We'll begin packing tonight," said Nadir. "We have time, after all."

"Right!" said Madame Giry. "What you need right now is some _fun_!"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Somewhere between chapters 8 and 11 and probably would have been better if posted back in '04:**

Erik found himself standing back in one of the auditoriums in the Opera, feeling slightly woozy. The Opera wasn't demolished, crushed, or in any way destroyed. Everything did look slightly burned, though.

"Oooh, I don't feel so good," he said in a very OOC-ish way. He checked his pulse and wasn't all that pleased with the result.

"That would be the effects of interdimensional travel," said a sexy Scottish voice that caused several new phans to swoon. Erik looked up.

"Who are --"

"I'm the Phantom of the Opera," said Movie!Phantom. "Who're you?" He eyed his alternate - better - self suspiciously. Erik glanced around quickly, then looked back at the Phantom.

"_I'm_ the Phantom of the Opera," he corrected. "Why isn't the Opera destroyed?"

"It is," Movie!Phantom answered. "It burned when I made the chandelier fall. And what do you mean, _you're _the Phantom? I am."

Erik shook his head. "No, a giant robot version of my cat destroyed it."

"I think I'd have noticed if that had happened."

"Sorry," said MetaChi, waltzing up and looking at Erik. She was careful to avoid looking at Movie!Phantom, for fear of slipping into Fangirl Mode. Not that she wasn't already in Fangirl Mode around Erik, her fangirling of him was a different type of fangirling. "I accidentally sent you to the movie continuum. I'll send you back now. Don't worry." She snapped her fingers again, this time sending Erik to his own home, and foolishly chanced a look at Movie!Phantom.

She began drooling.

"o.O" said Movie!Phantom, and ran away. The second he was out of sight, she smacked herself.

"Stupid!" she said. "Why am I letting myself _do _that?"

"Because he's damn sexy!" cried the movie phans, running past.

"But he's not _supposed_ to be!" she shouted.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**From chapter two:**

"And how do you know what I'll do or not?" Madame Giry asked, scowling at him.

"Because soon, the managers will be crawling back to Erik, begging him to return to the Opera," said Nadir matter-of-factly.

The others turned to him. "How do you know that?" they asked together.

"The Authoress left this note lying around," said Nadir, withdrawing it from his coat to show it to them. It said, in barely legible writing: _Near the end of phiccy, make managers crawl back to Erik and beg his forgiveness. (POSSIBLE ENDING!)_

Erik smacked the back of Nadir's head.

"It says 'possible ending', you idiot!" said Erik, grabbing the note and examining it further. "How do we even know that this is from an Authoress, anyway? And how do we know it's a 'she'?"

Nadir, rubbing the back of his head, turned the note over. There were many doodles, most of Erik, but some of Philippe as well, and some characters that Erik and Nadir didn't recognize. One looked suspiciously like Stitch. There were also many hearts, in which the words "I LOVE Erik!" were written. Of course, there were many variations of it, in which the word 'love' was replaced by 'adore', 'revere', 'idolize', 'honor', 'heart', and everyone's favorite, 'worship'.

"It is," began Nadir spookily, "the work of a phangirl!"

Everyone gasped out of pure necessity for the spooky tone Nadir used. Except Erik, who snatched the note from Nadir's hand and stuffed it away somewhere within the deep recesses of his coat.

"I'll be keeping this," said Erik smoothly, "for evidence."

The others snickered.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**From somewhere between chapter twelve and chapter thirteen (You know, the Big Time Gap of DOOM):**

Your computer monitor suddenly fades to black (admit it, you can see the screen growing darker and darker) and when the color returns, the scene is no longer at Erik's somehow transdimensional apartment, but at a newsroom where a blonde-haired blue-eyed teenage girl sat. Except, for the moment, the eyes were green. Contact lenses, doncha know.

". . . Blue and yellow does make green, right?" she asked, staring off to the side, out of the camera's range. She seemed to get a positive answer, for she nodded and turned back to face the camera, shuffling her papers professionally as she did so.

"I need to dye my hair," she muttered before grinning at the camera. "Maybe red."

The camera suddenly shook violently, and she glared toward it. "I'll talk about whatever I want! Thisis _my_ talk show!"

The camera continued to be violent.

"I hate you," she said to the camerawoman.

"Feeling's mutual," came the answer. "Now get on with it! I've procrastinated on this chapter long enough as it is."

Mina coughed, then spread her papers out on the desk in front of her, after which she folded her hands and smiled serenely at the camera.

"Welcome, ladies and gents, to Mina's Opinionated Evening Show!" She briefly frowned, not really caring for that very uncreative name, then went on. "Today, I'm going to talk about my father, Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, my mother, Christine Daae, and Raoul de Chagny, my . . . . wait. He doesn't even know about me!"

A packet of paper came flying at Mina from behind the camera. She didn't catch it, in order to demonstrate her un-Mary-Sue-ness, and let it hit her.

She reached down to the floor, picked up the packet, and ripped it open. She scanned the contents quickly, then blinked.

"Raoul's one of my godfathers?" She looked intensely surprised.

The camera bobbed up and down in assent.

"What about Philippe?" she asked, staring at whoever was behind the camera. At a quick movement from said camerawoman, she continued looking at the papers that were in the packet thrown at her.

". . . Oh. Wow."

Behind the camera, the camerawoman smirked.

Mina balled up the papers and threw them with precision at the camerawoman.

". . . OWWWWW."

"Take THAT."

"'s not _my _fault."

"Yes, it is," Mina replied. "You're the one who created me as Erik and Christine's daughter, sometimes make Philippe Dad's brother, turned Aunt Siren into a real character, made the Shade into a sex-crazed jerk, and -- hey, where's Tony?"

"Who?"

"Gandalf's apprentice. Carlotta and Richard's adopted son. Used to go by the name of Lil Firmin?"

". . . Oh. Him. Hmm. Y'know, I don't -- Oh, crap." The camerawoman looked around furiously for somewhere to hide, but by the time she thought she might have possibly found a place, it was far too late.

Agent Rena, of the PPC, came barreling out of nowhere and up onto the stage. The force of such an action caused her to crash head on into the Authoress and after properly subduing her, began charging her with the crimes that Mina just described, plus the numerous others she had commited that Mina hadn't known about.

Sitting at her desk, watching this with vast amusement, Mina grinned viciously.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Alternate opening for chapter 13: **

Erik and the Siren glanced up from where they were seated in a giant white space, playing Uno. It was a big empty white space, and had been so for well over a year. Where they were sitting was roughly where the living room of Erik's apartment had been. As they threw looks around the whiteness, the whiteness itself seemed to slowly not be so white anymore, as if something was slowly being sketched in.

"Ah," said Erik. "I think we're finally getting some attention again."

"'Bout time," said the Siren, looking around at the room, which was beginning to materialize into the familiar apartment of previous chapters. She laid her cards down, face down so Erik couldn't cheat, and stood up to walk to the door, where she opened it and peeked out. "Yep," she said. "Looks like we're being written again."

Erik slammed his cards down upon the table, face down as well. He looked around the newly materialized room and seemed to be waiting. After a moment of checking the walls and being sure that they were stable, the Siren sat back down.

"What're you doing?" she asked after a moment of watching him look at the ceiling.

"Waiting for that fool Authoress to show up, like she's been constantly doing throughout this entire misadventure."

The Siren looked at the ceiling, then back down at her masked employer. "Want me to call her?"

"Why would I want you to do that?"

The Siren shrugged. As she shrugged, though, a knock came at the door. The heads of both Erik and the Siren, as well as Ayesha's, turned toward the sound. Ayesha was far less interested in who the person on the other side could be, however, and laid back down to sleep a bit more.

"I'll get it!" said the Siren. Erik wondered vaguely if he should hide, but decided against that as it was a cowardly thing to do. Meeting no resistance from him on the subject of answering the knock, she hopped from her seat to bounce to the door and peer out. "Miiiiina! HI!"

"Hi, Aunt Siren," Mina said, coming into the apartment without waiting for an invitation to do so. Morwenna, with her resemblance to Madeleine and need to hide out in this continuum, decided to stay outside, where Erik couldn't see her. The Siren, nonetheless, peeked out to wave at her.

"Hi, Morwenna!"

"Hi, Siren."

"Not coming in?"

"I don't think it's a good idea."

"Hm. Probably. Want anything to drink anyway?"

"Only if you've got wine." She grinned. The Siren laughed, realizing at once why exactly she wanted it, and went to get her some. Because of course Erik would have some. As she crossed room into the kitchen, Mina looked around the room, avoiding Erik's watchful and wary look. Because Erik of course realized that hey, this girl looks kinda like Christine. Except she had green eyes, dark hair, was taller, and had a generally more malicious aura.

"I see you haven't unpacked," she said. Then, to the Siren, added, "I want a martini."

"Sure thing," said the Siren, opening the fridge. Yeah, fridge. Very modern one, too, with an ice maker.

"We haven't gotten around to it," said Erik. "Who _are _you?"

"Name's Mina," said Mina, accepting the glass from the Siren. She took a sip.

"Mina?" said Erik, having a quick flashback to that five minutes he's spent on that island with that crazy Authoress. "Wait. According to that insane woman, you're -- but there's no logical possibility of _that_. Christine and I -- we haven't -- I would _never_ -- _she _would never -- that's _impossible._"

"Highly improbable," Mina corrected, taking another sip. "I should have known that gorram dolt would have told you about me. But," she continued, "yes. It _is _possible, because look! I exist." She spun around on one foot, careful not to let her drink spill. "I'm just not from here, that's all."

Erik stared. Mina grinned.

"Aunt Siren. She can jump across dimensions."

"It's called continuum hopping," the Siren corrected, coming back from a quick conversation with Morwenna in the hallway.

"Whatever," said Mina, taking another sip. "Before I cause any more damage here, I just have one thing to say." She pointed directly at Erik's face, right where his nose would be if he'd had one. "Dad. Yes, _Dad_."

Erik blinked and felt an odd surge of paternal feelings he hadn't quite realized he possessed.

"What's left for you here?" Mina continued.

". . . Nothing," he sighed.

"Right. Mom's happily married to Raoul. The Opera's finished." At that, she paused. "Where's Darkwing?"

"After the Opera got smushed, the Authoress kidnapped him away to safety," the Siren put in helpfully, now sitting on the couch and reading volume three of Chobits.

"Okay. So, there's nothing left for you here."

"Don't rub it in," Erik muttered.

"Therefore," said Mina, finishing off her martini and holding the glass out for the Siren to take. The Siren stared at it as if it was an alien creature and after a moment, Mina rolled her eyes and took it to the kitchen herself, grumbling as she did so. The Siren grinned to herself and went back to her manga.

"Therefore," Mina repeated when she returned, "I give you these." She handed him a set of cruise tickets she hadn't been holding five seconds ago. Erik took them cautiously.

"Cruise tickets?" he asked. "To New York," he said, sounding almost defeated. "_Why_?"

"It's your destiny to go. And you're not listening to it yell at you, so you're getting a bit of a push. Are you going to go?"

Erik looked at the tickets. "Perhaps."

"Better than nothing," Mina figured, and moved to go toward the door to leave. The Siren waved without looking up from her book. Mina waved back, crossing the doorway.

"Bye, Dad," she said. "See you somewhen."

Erik fidgeted in his chair, wondering if he should -- hell yes. "Wait," he said. Mina paused and looked back.

"Are you reallymy daughter?" Man, that felt weird to say.

Mina smiled. "Yeah, Dad, I am. Only - not. It's complicated." And she left, leaving Erik feeling confused.

"Don't try to figure it out," said the Siren. "It only makes sense if you were there. Or," she added, "watched the video or read the phic itself. And even that doesn't really work. Best to ignore the technicalities and accept it, really."

Erik decided that for once he'd take the Siren's advice and instead counted out the tickets. "Why are there ten here?"

"Oh!" said the Siren, marking her place in the manga. "That's 'cuz you, me, Ayesha, Nadir, Darius, Madame Giry, and Meg are going too!"

Erik counted. "But that's only seven. And why would Ayesha need a ticket?"

The Siren slapped her head. "Fred's coming too!"

"Then eight. There's two left."

"I don't know," she said truthfully. "I'm hungry."

"I'm not taking you back to Denny's," Erik said at once.

"'Kay," said the Siren. "I wanna go to Hometown Buffet!"

"No," he answered immediately. "That's worse."

"No it isn't!"

"Actually, it is. Any restaurant like that is."

"But I wanna go out," the Siren whined.

"How about McDonald's?"

"No!"

"Why are we arguing over American restaurants?" Erik wondered sensibly. "Let's go to [fancy French place."

"I guess," the Siren sulked. "But I wanted Hometown Buffet."

"No!" said Erik. "It's either [French place or nowhere."

"Okay!" said the Siren, cheery again.

After feeding Ayesha, Erik and the Siren left. Left again to leave Ayesha wallowing in her loneliness and jealousy. Poor Ayesha.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Another alternate opening for chapter 13:**

After forcing the Authoress to go back and reread the entire fic, as well as tolerating some revisions she insisted upon making, she finally agreed that her insanity was definitely taking over the well-being of this phic, and that she'd do her best to stop.

Erik didn't believe her.

That was how she found herself in an anonymous group for insane crossover loving weirdos who can't write well at all.

But this story is not about her, it is about the adventures of Erik after having been cruelly evicted from the one place he'd finally been able to call home.

Speaking of which.

"Muffins!" said the Siren, bringing them out to be consumed. Ayesha felt her hatred for the half-mermaid thing going down. Only slightly, though.

Erik took one and, still disturbed by the otherworldly event that'd happened last chapter, stared at the wall through which the tourists had disappeared through.

"There is no spoon," said the Siren.

This startled Erik out of his reverie, and he blinked. "What?"

"I said, what are we doing tomorrow?" she repeated.

"Oh," said Erik. "I thought you'd said . . . never mind. That's too absurd, even for you."

"'Cuz I was thinking we could go skydiving, or something."

"How about we head to New York?" Erik replied instead, having no real interest in either of those activities, given his heart was acting up, due to the small bit of Kay!influence he had.

The Siren lit up. Literally. Like a lightbulb. "Oh, Erik, _really_?"

"I suppose. Given that everyone and everything have been telling me that's where I need to go."

"Yay!" The Siren glanced around and, with a rare bit of common sense, asked, "No point in unpacking then, huh?"

"Not particularly."

"I'm gonna go call Meg!" said the Siren, bouncing out the door. Erik watched, choosing not to tell her that Meg was likely out of shouting range and that her voice being that high would cause some fatalities. Erik thought a little bit of death, even accidental, would be nice.

Ayesha rubbed against his ankles and prayed she'd soon be free of the Siren, even if she did make some damn good muffins.

When the Siren returned, Ayesha was sorely disappointed.

"Madame Giry, Meg, Nadir, and Darius will be waiting by the Seine tomorrow at noon," she said. "What'll we do in the meantime?"

Erik pondered. "Probably get all of our tickets. Wait. They're coming with us?"

The Siren nodded. The resulting look on Erik's disfigured face, unable to be seen at all because of the mask, was that of pure, abject horror. Or terror. Maybe both.

"Why are _they_ coming?"

"Well," said the Siren. "Madame Giry and Meg are coming because there's nothing left for them here. Nadir and Darius want to come because that's where you're going. It's too bad he's still angry with me." She looked a bit sad at Nadir's righteous anger.

Erik stood up, grabbing another muffin as he did so, and went toward the door. "Will you stay here with Ayesha?"

The Siren blinked. Ayesha protested very, very loudly.

"Why?" they both asked, but in very different tones of voices.

"Because," said Erik, knowing that that would get the Siren.

"Fine," said the Siren huffily. Ayesha growled.

"And you," he said to Ayesha. "I'll bring you a treat."

Ayesha mewed her approval and purred as she curled up for a nap.

"Oh, _she _gets a treat?" the Siren huffed.

"Manga," Erik reminded her before exiting the apartment, locking the door behind him. The Siren stood up to move toward the window.

"You know," she called down once she saw Erik on the sidewalk, "if you get ambushed by the phans, it's not my fault."

That was enough to make Erik hesitate, but as he did not want the Siren with him, he kept going. The Siren slumped to the floor in a hissy fit.

"Not fair," she grumbled. Ayesha mewed. "Oh, shut up." Ayesha mewed again. "Like I care." Mew. "Psh." Mew.

The Siren stood up and glared down at the cat. "Stop acting like you're smarter than me!"

Mew.

"Okay, so you probably _are_, but that isn't the point." She went back to the window and began to climb out of it. Ayesha began mewing a bit more urgently.

"Shush. If we're going to New York and staying there, then I have to say goodbye to a friend."

Meeeewwww.

"Yes, amazing, isn't it."

And with that, the Siren was gone. Ayesha was happy for the freedom, but hoped the Siren wasn't doing anything stupid. She didn't think Erik cared for the fish thing all that much, but she didn't want to be blamed for her death should she die.

Ayesha went to sleep.

**xxxx**

Erik walked along the streets slowly, occasionally taking the care to sidestep the Mary Sues that saw fit to try and rush him, whilst avoiding his phans who were lurking in alleys and doorways. Slightly behind him and to the left, he heard a set of footsteps fall into place behind him. Seeing as he didn't get an attempted tackleglomp, he thought about ignoring whoever was behind him, 'til she said something.

"Hi Daddy."

He stopped, and heard the steps behind him stop as well. He turned slowly, and found himself looking at a young woman who seemed like an odd combination of Madeleine and Christine. Which was pretty much impossible, as Christine was supposed to look like Madeleine and Mina therefore couldn't be a combination of them both. In another Universe, Mina disappeared in a puff of logic.

He didn't quite know what to say, until the words of the Authoress were brought back in full force.

_"[. . . — Mina's your kid from a different reality and [. . . — are here to kinda supervise the thing[. . . chosen book is Phantom of the Opera [. . . she's already got 'Sue-ish qualities - just being your and Christine's kid is a big no-no."_

_"What do you mean Christine and I have a child!"_

". . ." said Erik, hoping he didn't wind up with a headache from that whopper of a verbal headslam. "I take it you're Mina?"

Mina looked slightly surprised that he knew who she was, but nodded the affirmative. "Yes."

"And what are you here for?"

Avoiding the glares of the rest of the 'Sues in the vicinity, and some from the phans as well, Mina said, "Perhaps we should continue walking. It's not safe right now."

"You're telling me," Erik grumbled.

"Watch out," she advised, just as a group of 'Sues went for an attack. He dodged most of them, and Mina blasted one away with her magic.

"Where's Aunt Siren?" she asked.

"'Aunt'?"

"Yes, Aunt. Where is she?"

"I told her to stay at the apartment."

"Why? She's supposed to be with you at all times."

"Why?"

"You notice how you weren't a magnet for 'Sues before this?"

". . . Yes?"

"She keeps them away."

"Does she now?"

"She does. And it's why I'm here. Mind if we teleport?"

"Can you do that?"

"Certainly. Shall I?"

"As long as it doesn't kill us."

"It won't. Hold on."

And Mina took her wand out again, held onto his arm, said the appropriate words, and they were off, to the docks to buy cruise tickets.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Some really **_**weird**_** part of a scrapped chapter 13:**

"Then," said the Siren, "I've got to say goodbye to a friend." She turned toward the door and walked out. After a short pause, a lightbulb went off over Mina's head.

"Hey," she said, chasing after the Siren. "Aunt Siren, are you really going to --"

". . ." said Morwenna. "I think I should go after her." She left quickly as well.

Erik, Nadir, Madame Giry, and Meg looked around.

"Great," said Meg. "Now what do we do with all of your stuff?"

**xxxx**

The Siren strolled down a road, flanked by Morwenna and Mina, who wondered if she was really going to go through with this.

"Aunt Siren," Mina said. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"No," came the answer. Mina and Morwenna exchanged glances.

"Then don't do it," Morwenna suggested.

"I have to."

"Who is she going to see?" Morwenna whispered.

"Her ex-husband, I think," Mina replied.

Morwenna, along with the Authoress and some of the audience I'm sure, blinked in surprise. "She was _married_?"

"Yep," said Mina.

Before Morwenna could say anything more, the Siren stopped in front of a rundown house that no self-respecting person would look twice at. She knocked on the door, then waited. And waited. And waited some more.

"We don't want no stinkin' cookies!" shouted a gruff voice from inside the house. The Siren sighed.

"I'm not a GirlScout."

"We don't want anything else you're sellin', neither."

"Myles, I'm not selling anything."

Footsteps sounded within, then the door opened a crack; just enough to see out and hopefully not be seen. The Siren waved.

The door suddenly found itself flung wide open and the Siren suddenly found herself engulfed in a bearhug.

"Guh," said the Siren. "Can't . . . breathe."

The grip let up, but only slightly. After a moment more, the grip let up completely and the rabid hugger stepped backward, affording the Siren a good look at him.

Mina and Morwenna stood in the background, gaping at him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Some point in a draft for chapter 13:**

Erik, the Siren, Ayesha, Nadir, Darius, Madame Giry, and Meg all stood next to the Seine, attempting to figure out which way to go to get to the harbor so they could all go to New York, when another of the Authoress's Crazy Random Crossovers of DOOM!™ happened.

As they poured over the map, Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu dashed past yelling something about Leonardo da Vinci's paintings.

Erik & Company lowered their map and stared after the fleeing couple, blinking slowly.

". . ." said Madame Giry, Meg, and Nadir. The Siren giggled.

"I am not even going to ask," said Erik, turning his attention back to the map.

Ayesha sashayed up to the Siren and, bracing herself for imminent tossage, bit into the Siren's ankle. _Oh, sweet justice! Oh, delicious revenge! _she thought happily, then actually winced as the taste from the Siren's flesh began to set in. _Dear Bast, _she thought in horror, _she tastes like a month old can of tuna that's been sitting in the sun! _But Ayesha was strong, and wasn't going to let go until the Siren felt the pain from her bite.

After thirty seconds, the Siren had the good sense to look down.

"Erik," she said slowly, "I think Ayesha has it in for me."

Erik leaned back so that he could see around Madame Giry and Nadir, and, after assessing the situation, gasped accordingly. "Ayesha!" he scolded, dropping his part of the map and disentangling her from the Siren's foot, whereupon he proceeded to cuddle her. Ayesha, that is. Not the Siren. Never the Siren. "How could you do that, Ayesha? You don't know where the Siren's foot has been!"

Ayesha purred happily. _Yup, _she thought, _my plans are always ingenius. MWAHAHAHA!_

Contrary to what one may think, the Siren was actually pleased about this, for it caused an even wider gap between her and Suedom.

**- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -**

**From a previous part of chapter fourteen: **

The Siren hummed to herself as she carefully put her brochures away, as has been referred to above, and patted them happily as she closed her suitcase. Which was waterproof, as everything she owned was. Even her iPod that she hadn't let Erik known about. She knew he had one, and that he frequently used it, but hadn't told anyone else from the continuum about it. She felt it was just the same to keep hers hidden. Besides, if Fred knew at all that she had one, she wouldn't have it anymore. Which would suck.

Then she was finished and went to the door to go hunt down whomever she could find. As she opened the door, a group of girls fell into the room, as they'd been pressing their ears against the door, trying in vain to see if they could hear Erik.

"Hi!" said the Siren. "If you're looking for Erik's ro--"

"Who're you?" a phan interrupted. "This is room number 245, but _you're _definitely not Erik. What are you? Some sort of horrible experiment gone wrong?"

"I can help you with your hair," another piped up. "It's a mess."

The Siren blinked. "No, thank you. You don't know who I am?"

The phans shook their heads as Ayesha padded out from under the bed and stared at them.

"Is that Ayesha?" one of them asked, pointing at her.

"Yes," said the Siren. "And I'm the Siren."

Immediately, the tune of some of the phans changed considerably.

"Uh. Never mind! We weren't really looking for Erik! Don't kill us!" As they were saying that, and more, they tried to back out of the room so the Siren couldn't get her hands on them.

"WTF," one whispered to another. "The siren's _real_?"

"Leroux never wrote about _you_!" another claimed. "_Erik _was the siren!"

"Who the heck's the siren?" a movie phan wondered.

The Siren laughed. "You guys must be new."

After a brief pause, they all nodded.

"Well, come in," said the Siren, gesturing to the bed in the room. "Sit down and I'll tell you a story."

The phans looked at each other.

"Are you going to kill us?" one of them asked.

"No," the Siren told them.

"Really?"

"Honestly."

They did as she asked, mostly because they didn't want to make her angry, and moved to sit on the bed. As they did so, the ship, which had already pulled away from port, headed out into the Atlantic. The Siren wondered to herself why the newcomers weren't taught even a little blurb about herself. She hadn't had to deal with newcomers for awhile, but she didn't particularly like having to explain her existence to those who had no idea she was there. She'd have to have a little talk with the Devoted Erik Phangirls later about getting a blurb or something of her own inserted into the Crash Course all the phans who entered any of the continuums were required to take.

"Leroux didn't mention me specifically because I asked him not to," she began. "So he covered that up with Erik supposedly doing it."

"But he did!" said a phan. "When he came back into the house, Christine saw him dripping wet."

They all began drooling at the thought of a wet Erik, no matter which version they were envisioning. And yes, a couple _were_ imagining Leroux!Erik. So there.

"That's just what Leroux _wants_ you to think," the Siren said. "I was out there going to Philippe's boat to kill him."

"Who?" said a couple of them while another said,

"No! Not Philippe!"

"But," the Siren continued, "I decided he was too cute to kill and took him back to shore, where I entrusted him to the capable hands of a group of your associates." She pointed at the girls.

"Lucky them," one of them muttered enviously, the one who'd just protested the death of Philippe.

"Then I dressed up a dummy to look like him and left it on the shore to be found. Or was that when I killed that annoying stage hand to take his place?" She paused thoughtfully for a moment, then waved a hand dismissively. "It doesn't matter. What matters is, I am in a lot of the story. I just stay away from as much of the narrative as I can. It helps the tone of the story, believe me. Have any of you read Thursday Next?" she asked suddenly and seemingly without reason. When the phans shook their heads, she frowned - a rare sight to see. "Honestly, what _are_ they teaching you girls?"

"Who?" one of them piped up.

The Siren stared at them. "The Devoted Erik Phangirls™."

"Who're they?" The phans looked confused. "And why is that trademarked?"

"You're not with them?" the Siren asked, ignoring the second question. The phans shrugged, not knowing what else to do or say, pretty much. "That's strange. I thought that -- hoo boy. How did you lot get here then?"

"We fell and knocked ourselves out," one of the phans offered. "When we woke up, we were here."

"Oh," said the Siren. She sounded disappointed, which was also a rare thing to hear. "I guess they just haven't gotten to you yet."

"Who?" they asked again. Instead of answering, the Siren went to the door and looked out, as if she was waiting for someone to come along. As the phans waited, another group of girls wandered through the door. They were carrying AK-47s and chainsaws, and the new phans wondered just what they'd gotten themselves into.

"You all," said one of the armed phans, "are going to come with us."

The sitting phans glanced at each other nervously, then, with a gulp of nervousness, they stood up to follow their captors through the door. The Siren waved cheerily. "Bye, guys!" she called. "Don't hurt them. They didn't mean anything bad!"

"Oh, shut up," the armed phans called back. "They'll be fine."

The Siren left then, too, locking the door behind herself and heading off in the opposite direction.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Scrapped bits from chapter nineteen:**

"What's that?" said Erik. "You wish to dine with another cat? Well, I think we can manage that. Is it that Garfield fellow the Siren was referring to some chapters back?"

"Mrow."

"No?"

"Mrow."

"Mssr . . . Chunkybins?"

"MROW."

". . . Chubbykins?"

"Meow."

Off in her Super Secret Lair that she still had from Phantom of the SOAP Opera, the Authoress cackled madly as she watched a certain cartoon.

We'll leave Erik looking all confused and wondering who Ayesha was talking about and head upstairs to where the Siren and Nadir were having a conversation about . . . something.

"Are you sure this'll work?" the Siren asked, looking down suspiciously at the object she held in her hand. Nadir nodded fervently, to express his conviction that yes, it'd work.

"It will," he insisted. "All you need do is get close enough."

"Ah," said the Siren, holding the object up closer to her face so she could study it. "What am I supposed to do again?"

Nadir mentally facepalmed. "Siren."

"Yes?"

"Just go."

"But -"

"Go."

"But -"

"SIREN."

"NADIR," said the Siren in the exact tone of voice Nadir had used and not mockingly at all. "I'm confused. What is it I'm s'posed to do again?" She waved the thing around haphazardly, and Nadir ducked to avoid getting his head blown off, or something even worse than that. "What _is_ this thing?"

"And you've been . . . where? for the last ten minutes?"

"No need to get snarky," the Siren huffed.

"Honey," Nadir said, like a sixty year old woman with a 'tude might, "that was _not _snarky. You want snarky, watch _this_."

A cart on wheels appeared out of nowhere with a TV resting atop it. He turned on the TV and gestured dramatically at the screen.

"Hello sick people and their loved ones!" said the TV.

"Oh oh oh!" said the Siren in recognition, lunging at the TV to turn it off. "I know this show! The Authoress recently fell in love with it and made us watch it with her! I've gotta turn it off before -"

But it was too late. There was a sudden sonic boom from the end of the hall, and with a sudden rush of wind, the Authoress was right _there_, kneeling in front of the TV, holding a bag of M&Ms, and pretty much worshipping it. The TV, that is, not the candy.

"Oh, House," the Authoress gushed disgustingly and fangirlishly, "You are so awesome. I love you. You and your cane and your nastiness to people. And your Vicodin! And. just. your AWESOMENESS."

Nadir blinked in surprise, the Siren giggled, and anyone else who happened to be in the hallway edged away from the creepy woman worshipping some rude guy in a mechanical box of some sort.

"HOOOOOOOUUUUUSE," said the Authoress, in the background.

"Er," said Nadir.

"Well," said the Siren, "I _tried _to turn it off before she realized. Why'd you do that, anyway?"

". . ." said Nadir, who really didn't know why he'd done that.

"Whatever," said the Siren, whose attention had inexplicably returned to the thing she was holding. She handed it to Nadir.

"I don't want any part of your scheme," she called over her shoulder as she walked down the hall, passing the Authoress along the way.

"Oh, _Hugh_," said the Authoress, who was now hugging the TV.

Nadir watched the Siren leave, then, with a groan, pointed the universal remote at the TV and pressed the off button.

". . . ." said the Authoress, falling backward from the TV. She blinked at the dark screen, then climbed slowly to her feet. She looked up toward the ceiling, raised her arms, and fell to her knees dramatically. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"If I were a judge," said Nadir, setting the remote atop the television, "I'd rate that as a 1.5."

The Authoress looked up at him and tried to resist the urge to grin. "What?"

"You suck," said Nadir. "You can't act."

"Well, _fine_!" the Authoress spat, climbing to her feet again to glare up at Nadir, who merely raised an eyebrow in response. "We'll see how you like it when you're eaten by a _shark_!"

"A shark," Nadir said flatly. "Unlikely. Frankly, I'd be more concerned if I got any more out of character."

That made the Authoress pause. "Hmm. You're right. Fine." She snapped her fingers, and the TV, and the universal remote, disappeared. "There ya go."

Nadir stared at the Authoress. "Stop that."

"Sure thing," said the Authoress, poofing away. Nadir looked around at the people staring at him, around the hallway, and blinked.

"Er," he said. "How did I get here?"

And he went to find the stairs.

"I will not squee," Mina stated flatly.

"Squee, dammit!" Morwenna demanded. "Prove you're my great grandniece!"

"Never. It is demeaning, and I refuse."

"It's _fun_."

"Perhaps, but the Authoress does it all the time. I refuse to sink to her level."

". . . You make a good point."

"That I do."

"You do," said Morwenna. "What were we talking about?"

"I have no idea," said Mina.

"Well, then," said Morwenna, looking about their joint suite blankly.

In another part of the continuum, the Authoress took a chainsaw to a giant slab of wall. Then she threw a shoe at it.


	22. The Cast

CREDITS

Erik . . . . . . . . . . Jeremy Irons

Nadir . . . . . . . . . . Naveen Andrews

Madame Giry . . . . . . . . . . Emma Thompson

Meg Giry . . . . . . . . . . Maggie Grace

The Siren . . . . . . . . . . Rachel McAdams

The Authoress . . . . . . . . . . Kate Winslet

Firmin Richard . . . . . . . . . . Franc Ross

Armand Moncharmin . . . . . . . . . . David Schwimmer

Gabriel Van Helsing . . . . . . . . . . Hugh Jackman

Carl . . . . . . . . . . David Wenham

Remy LeBeau . . . . . . . . . . Josh Holloway

Darius . . . . . . . . . . Marc Casabani

Raoul de Chagny . . . . . . . . . . Orlando Bloom

Christine Daae . . . . . . . . . . Emilie de Ravin

Ayesha . . . . . . . . . . An electronic plushie

Mecha-Ayesha . . . . . . . . . . Megas XLR

The Phans . . . . . . . . . . Every POTO book phan out there.

Philippe de Chagny . . . . . . . . . . Viggo Mortensen

Fred . . . . . . . . . . Eric Stoltz

Marius Pontmercy . . . . . . . . . . Orlando Bloom

Mina . . . . . . . . . . Tania Raymonde

Morwenna Flabbergastor . . . . . . . . . . Kathy Bates

The (Only) Dark Lord, Sauron . . . . . . . . . . A tennis ball on a stick, with CGI overlays

The Mouth of Sauron . . . . . . . . . . Jeremy Irons

Nightcrawler . . . . . . . . . . Alan Cumming

Timon . . . . . . . . . . Nathan Lane

Vegeta . . . . . . . . . . Himself

Zaphod Beeblebrox . . . . . . . . . . Sam Rockwell

Boba Fett . . . . . . . . . . Temuera Morrison

Saruman . . . . . . . . . . Christopher Lee

Frank the Pug . . . . . . . . . . Tim Blaney

Allo . . . . . . . . . . The T-Rex from Jurassic Park

Darkwing Duck . . . . . . . . . . Jim Cummings

Cecile Jammes . . . . . . . . . . Liliana Mumy

Madeleine . . . . . . . . . . Madeline Kahn

Mama Valerius . . . . . . . . . . Phyllis Diller

Marie Perrault . . . . . . . . . . Linda Fiorentino

The Luggage . . . . . . . . . . Bob the Footlocker

Faramir . . . . . . . . . . David Wenham

Jean Valjean . . . . . . . . . . Liam Neeson

Cosette . . . . . . . . . . Jewel Staite

Syndrome . . . . . . . . . . Brad Bird

Sayid Jarrah . . . . . . . . . . Naveen Andrews

Eriol . . . . . . . . . . Daniel Radcliffe

Emperor Zhark . . . . . . . . . . Himself

The Waiter in Chapter Fifteen . . . . . . . . . . One of my original characters

The Mary Sue in Chapter Sixteen . . . . . . . . . . Suzette Honore Isabelle Théry

Tenacious D . . . . . . . . . . Miriam Korn

Agent Lithium . . . . . . . . . . Natalie Portman

Sam . . . . . . . . . . Bill Farmer

Max . . . . . . . . . . Nick Jameson

Lamont Cranston/The Shadow . . . . . . . . . . Alec Baldwin

Moe . . . . . . . . . . Peter Jacobson

AND

Weena Mercator as The Hopping Woman


End file.
